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IN PORTS AFAR 



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EDWIN A. SCHELL 




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Digitized by tiie Internet Arciiive 
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IN PORTS AFAR 



By . 
EDWIN A^ SCHELL 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 



Copyright, 1914, 
By Edwin A. Schell 



AUG 28 1914 

it 

i>CI,A380138 



^44-0 



TO 

TRAVELERS ACROSS ALL MERIDL/^NS OF LONGITUDE, 

GRACIOUS IN HOSPITALITY, 

GENEROUS AS PROSPEROUS, 

PERSONAL FRIENDS 

AND FRIENDS OF MY WORK, THE COLLEGE, 

WITH GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



CONTENTS. 

PAQE 

I. Foreword and Wanderlust, - . - - 9 

II. Two Weeks with the Greek Army, - - 29 

III. The Ways of Trade, - - - - - - 44 

IV. The Country of Jesus, 67 

V. England All the Way, 84 

VI. The Great Circle of India— I, - - - 98 

VII. The Great Circle of India=II, - - - 120 

VIII. Half Way, =». = . = - 137 

IX. The Great American Adventure, = - - 154 

X. Education in the Philippines, = = = 168 

XI. Content and Per Contra, - - - = - 181 

XII. The Fourteenth Amendment in the Philippines, 193 

XIII. Fun^eral, Feast, and Function, - - = - 211 

XIV. The Modern Antony, ^ = = = - 223 
XV. America and Japan, = . = = = - 235 

XVI. Trans-Pacific, . = = = -. ^ 252 



IN PORTS AFAR 



Chapter I 

FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

rXlHE "wanderlust," like religion, is soul blown 
-^ in the race. Some subtle taint from the mi- 
gratory experiences of mankind remains as an 
infection of yearning and restlessness in us alL It 
does not need the advertisements of travel, pictures 
of galleries, tales of adventure, or maps of battle- 
fields to lure one abroad. It is innate, like honor, 
courage, and the instinct to command. The moun- 
tains that lift themselves into the sky, the stars on 
which we gaze, and the seas over which we rush are 
the same age after age ; likewise the desire to see 
them rene\^'s itself in every generation, and just 
as each man by some noble capacity may expand 
into knowledge of God and love and duty, so each 
heart opens to the curiosity and inquiry of what is 
beyond. Disappointment does not obliterate it, 
nor time heal it. No matter how long repressed 
by the discipline of life, it is yet like some latent 
bud ready to flower at opportunity. The Odyssey, 
-^neid, Anabasis fan it like a blow-pipe ; some pic- 

9 



IN PORTS AFAR 

ture of Balboa overlooking the Pacific, some head- 
line of Stanley breathless from the vast interior of 
Africa, or Peary, hooded and deep-chested from 
the frozen pole, summons us like some call of the 
wild, and renews the vows of our youth, 

"To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the western stars, until I die." 

Doubtless you have seen America from the Maine 
^voods to the utmost fringes of Alaska; feasted 
your eyes on the gorgeous colorings of the Yellow- 
stone and Grand Canon; followed the trails and 
heard the voices of Yosemite, and pierced every 
pass in the Rockies, from Banff to the Royal 
Gorge ; have followed the beaten path over Europe, 
and rode in a Pullman through Mexico; but still, 
like Ulysses, you feel, 

*'I can not rest from travel." 

Then some day comes a strange official envelope 
without a postage stamp, as though you had been 
appointed postmaster. It invited you to lecture 
for a whole month as a Government official to the 
Teachers' Assembly, Baguio, at the end of the 
Benguet Road, in the far-away mountain province 
of Luzon, and incidentally view Corregidor and 

10 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

Manila Bay, that already bulk so large In Ameri- 
can history; Chicago University professors have 
preceded you^ a doctor professor from Columbia 
will be your colleague; it is the first invitation ex- 
tended to a denominational college president; will 
you go? The archbishop, who is neighbor at 
Ludington-on-the-Lake, knowing Washington and 
what Uncle Sam's commission means, says, "Of 
course.'' His younger colleague, fresh from the 
day's work and ready for the day's sport, remarks, 
"Such invitations come only to a few and once in 
a lifetime," both of which help to confirm the ad- 
venture as an opportunity. Then, once we had 
offered ourselves for foreign work, only to be re- 
jected and the appointment given to another; and, 
though always encouraging missions and preaching 
about them, it was in the vague fashion those are 
compelled to use \^ho speak without personal knowl- 
edge. The circumnavigation trip would give op- 
portunity to cross India, visit some one of its 
villages, sojourn in the leading stations, attend a 
Conference, touch China, talk with the leading 
missionaries, and thus get a student's view of the 
missionary idea, rather than a hotel view with 
which most travelers are satisfied. This would 

11 



IN PORTS AFAR 

bring us to the actual residences of no less than 
seven Iowa Wesley an alumni who, following the 
lead of Dr. Vernon and Miss Lawson, have volun- 
teered for service on the picket line of missions. 
One of our daughters is given to the same work. 
We could inspect also the great colonies of France, 
Algiers, Tunis, and Indo-China ; would see Egypt, 
India and the Straits Settlements, the principal 
colonies of England, and thus be able intelligently 
to estimate the worth and spirit of our own ad- 
venture in the Philippines. 

And so it came about that on a mid-winter day, 
lofty with anticipation after a day \^ith the Wel- 
come Hall Settlement, Buffalo, in charge of Dr. 
William E. McLennan, we make the rounds of the 
big Fifth Avenue building, say good-bye to Homer 
Eaton for the last time on earth, and, with a for= 
mer student to take a farewell snapshot, we sail 
out past Sandy Hook v/ith a bundle of steamer 
letters in our hands and a blur of mist and love 
in our eyes. 

The world was present when New York was 
founded, and it remains truly cosmopolitan. Its 
geographical situation determines its greatness. 
Every European event affects its fortunes, the 

12 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

growth of every State In the Union contributes to 
its prosperity; it is unchallengeably the greatest 
harbor on the planet; it is in the east, and there- 
fore rising; it is by the sea, and from it we may 
take a swift sea-chariot to the ends of the earth, 
or the smoking steam demon to Mexico City or 
Puget Sound. That big five-masted schooner is 
bound for Rio; the one racing neck and neck with 
it is off for New Zealand. Am{erican Liner, Cu- 
narder, Nord-Deutscher, Hamburger Nachrichten, 
Spaniard, Frenchman, all sail for the Mediterra- 
nean the same day, almost the same hour. We 
wonder why more cabins are not taken on our 
ship; she is booked for Naples, but is bound for 
Patras, and will reach the Italian port five days 
late. New Yorkers know and the Naples steerage 
inquirer learns, but we do not. Husbands wait for 
wives and children five days at Naples, and wives 
for husbands; there is inconvenience, broken jour- 
neys, and general dissatisfaction. The men who 
control the line let you ship, wire you for your 
passage money, and then, months after, coolly 
write : 

"All steamship companies' sailing schedules are 
^subject to change without notice;' furthermore, we 

13 



IN PORTS AFAR 

are covered by clause No. 2 of the passage contract, 
which reads as follows: 

" 'The vessel shall have liberty to deviate from 
the direct or customary course — the company does 
not assume responsibility for missing a connection 
with other steamships.' 



55 



Thus their Chicago agent. In the language of 
Holy Writ, "Go not thou in the way with them." 

So we do not see Naples again, nor inspect our 
mission there, nor join dextram ad dextram with 
the Greenmans ; we buy no cameos, nor bring back 
the bronzes which we know are waiting for us, 
and just where. It is less loss because when the 
world was young we had traveled across Campania, 
looked out across the bay, located the ancient 
Raise, where the Romans, to the indignation of 
Horace, built their palaces out into the sea; had 
seen Cuma^, and Virgil's tomb, and even fancied the 
exact spot where the Alexandrian cornship with 
Paul on board had dropped its anchor. It is yet 
like a picture veiled in a golden haze, into which 
all colors and hopes resolve themselves. It is an 
event in any man's lifetime to come upon the foot- 
steps of St. Paul, as it was an event to Latin, Jew, 
and pagan to have him come to Rome. It was 

14 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

the accomplishment of a purpose long held in his 
mind, though not attained as he had expected. In 
the days of the Caesars a crossroad led to Capua, 
there joining the Appian Way. Yearning to help 
Rome, chained to a Roman legionary, St. Paul 
marches along the Alban slopes matching his spirit 
calmly against the Roman legions and empire. His 
own countrymen will not hear him, but he preaches 
to the soldiers in the barracks; exclusiveness dies 
hard, but it was dying even then; it was the last 
chance of the Jew ; rabbis who will not make terms 
with Christ must pass into silence and oblivion. 
The Greeks and Romans who crowded the forum 
gave him no hearing, only contemptuous indiffer- 
ence; but heathenism was wounded to the heart at 
his coming, and no forum could hold the myriads 
who now read the letters of the captivity. It took 
the Mamertine to give us the Epistles to Timothy, 
but they are worth it. Many an old hero of the 
faith still turns on his last pillow with the words 
of the imprisoned Paul on his lips, "I have fought 
a good fight; I have finished my course; I have 
kept the faith.'' 

There is a special charm in sailing for the Medi- 
terranean. The North Atlantic route, involving 

15 



IN PORTS AFAR 

as it does a shorter voyage, according to the mathe- 
matics of the great circle, and bringing us direct 
to our blood Norse brothers, the English and the 
German, is much more used. But the romance of 
sea history belongs to a journey in lower latitudes. 
The ship follo\^s the forty-first parallel until it 
approaches the Portuguese coast, thence south for 
Gibraltar and Algiers. The great mariners of 
history all sailed the same waters. Phoenicians, 
Carthagenians, Greeks, Romans, 'Norsemenj Ital- 
ians, Spaniards, French, English, all have pointed 
their ships over the same sea, by the same stars, 
and sailed or drifted into the Azores. Here passed 
Columbus "Westward Ho," and Santa Cruz, fa- 
mous marquis, greatest of the Spanish admirals, 
who took his title from the Bay of Santa Cruz; 
here sailed Drake, pirate and wrecker of Spanish 
galleons and, according to Lope de Vega's "Drag- 
ontea," the Dragon of the Apocalypse. Rodney, 
Decatur, Nelson, and others of whose names his- 
tory is full, all burning with the fires of hope and 
purpose, have seen these shores rise into sight and 
sink below the horizon. Their eyes, like mine, saw 
Draco blinding among the stars of the Bear, best 
known of the northern constellations, and the Dip- 

16 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

per make its nightly circuit about the pole. Their 
little ships serve as models in the museums now, 
and their faded portraits hang on the walls of 
the galleries men travel abroad to see, but their 
great names are a part of that perpetual heritage 
with which the past endows the present. 

The weather is much warmer than we had ex- 
pected for a T\?inter voyage, and we walk our five 
miles daily, play shuffle-board and deck golf, read 
and get acquainted with our fellow passengers sit- 
ting about in steamer chairs. Chess is a fine game 
for a long voyage. Sea travel affords the leisure 
chess requires. A German and an East-shore 
Marylander played a game every evening after din- 
ner in the reading-room. Their games averaged 
two hours in length. Temperamentally both were 
fitted for the game : phlegmatic, tenacious, and with 
a certain military fire and dash at times. We 
watched them by the hour, and once, when the 
German was all but checkmated, he used the same 
moves we had seen Bishop FitzGerald use in an 
almost similar impasse. No one better than the 
good bishop knew how to use the knight for pur- 
poses of attack, and he had a subtle sense of values 
that told him when it was profit and when loss to 
« 17 



IN PORTS AFAR 

exchange a bishop for the knight. Every game was 
a campaign to him, and he carried it all in his 
mind. He alone of all the men it has been my 
profit to know could perfectly play chess without 
board or pieces. He could begin with queen's 
pawn to queen's third, and through the most in- 
volved game know the exact location of every pawn 
and piece. That marked one of his aptitudes for 
the episcopal office. When there were three hun- 
dred appointments to make, each of the presiding 
elders knew their part of them — or let us hope and 
suppose they did — ^but he knew them all and car- 
ried them all in his great, frictionless mind. Just 
as Bishop Walden had a genius for figures, and 
would have made a great chancellor of the ex- 
chequer, so Bishop FitzGerald had a talent for ad- 
ministration. Few chess experts played the game 
better, and no bishop ever made uniformly better 
appointments. Some of the Conferences were in 
almost open revolt at his refusal to move men at 
the end of the first year. Young men from the 
colleges and on their way to preferment and con- 
spicuous places, he thought, could afford to go 
back for a second year; the bishop believed that 
to miove men in the rank and file at the end of 

18 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

the first year meant, without exception, that the 
man was inefficient. In his theory men who moved 
every year ought to study to increase their effi- 
ciency, learn how to stay acceptably or leave the 
itinerancy. The settled pastorate to him was put- 
ting the king in the "castle." 

And following these games forward on the look- 
out, and in the silent solitude of night and sea, 
unanswerable questions thrust themselves upon us 
unasked. Are men like queen, bishop, knight, 
rook, and pawn, lifted here and there and placed 
by some skillful player's hand, traded, pocketed, 
or lost by capture for the general good in some 
great "game," or do we by native force, training, 
and happy use of adventitious moments become 
^^pieces," and no longer pawns ; like the queen mov- 
ing all ways, or as a bishop narrowed to the white 
or black diagonal, or as the knight with his two 
paces forward and one to the right, while others 
lacking the force, teacher, or circumstance, remain 
pawns .f^ Either conclusion is preferable to the 
theory that we are subject to chance. Yet the first 
hypothesis challenges liberty, and the second me- 
diates against justice. The one leans toward 
authority, and the other tends toward democracy. 

19 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Yet in the singular sciences predicated upon them 
respectively, theology and politics, we are left at 
last to choose our own creed and elect our own 
governors. Two things germane to each hypothesis 
seem plain; first, that it is comforting to believe 
that we are put upon particular squares by the 
guiding authority of an unseen hand, and second, 
that there is no success possible to men, churches, 
or nations but in finding their real superiors and 
obeying them. 

Parallel to this is Kant's question as to whether 
a necessary condition of existence is to have had 
being in space and time. For example, is Julius 
Caesar more to us because he actually lived, and is 
Ben-Hur less because he is the creature of the im- 
agination of General Wallace? Csesar surely would 
be less to us were he not embellished by the his- 
torical fancy of Plutarch and the imaginative fac- 
ulty of Shakespeare. But what is the test of 
Reality.^ Does it, in the case of Caesar, lie in the 
proof that he walked the Forum, or in the imag- 
ination of his contemporaries and of after-times.'^ 
Would Ben-Hur be a greater "reality" had he 
actually served in the galleys, walked in the grove 
of Daphne, and won the chariot race.'^ He was 

20 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

not subject to conditions of space and time, but 
he has been actually created, unless creation is 
purely physical, and not psychical nor moral. 
Boys are named after him, a fraternal insurance 
company every week celebrates his courage and 
virtues in a ritual, and as you pass through Craw- 
fordsville even now men and women say, "Here 
Ben-Hur lived." This is not intellectual quibbling ; 
it is the Kantian proof of Christianity. Historical 
truth is a question of space and time ; Reality lies 
in the recognition which the mind gives as con- 
forming to and representing universal experience. 
This is the real test of the canonicity of a book. 
The merit of the Galatians is not that Paul wrote 
it, but what Paul wrote, and its weight and import 
as it appeals to me for broadmindedness and 
charity. If Galatians is more to me than other 
uncanonical letters, it is because Paul wrote such a 
message that its answering nobleness appealed to 
the bishops and believers who composed the Council 
of Carthage, and who therefore put it in the Canon. 
So Christianity, having taken possession of the 
spiritual convictions of mankind by conformity 
with universal experience, carries with it its own 
evidence, and every new generation may have — 

21 



IN PORTS AFAR 

nay, must have — its own conclusive proof. Such 
evidence is the only final barrier to formality and 
indifference, and without it religion becomes a mat- 
ter of altar-cloths and ritual. 

We carried with us besides our guide-books the 
"Will to Believe," by the late William James, and 
the eight books of the Odyssey — sixth to the thir- 
teenth, inclusive — recounting the experiences of 
Ulysses among the Phaeacians. It may have been 
the Greeks on board or the long-determined pleas- 
ure of the re-reading, but the story of the Phae- 
acians took on a new meaning as we coasted along 
in sight of ^tna, Ithaca, and up the Ionian Sea. 
The big university by the lake, and the academy 
recitation-room came back as we read, and at the 
same time we recalled the failure to memorize the 
first ten lines of the sixth book as attested by the 
professor's recitation mark. Glancing again at 
the pages, the billowy hexameters all but recite 
themselves : 

■UTTVO) KOL Ka/xaro) aprjfxevos. avrap A®T^vrj 

Some have thought that in the incident of the Phse- 
acians we have the earliest description of the Phoe- 

22 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

nician colonies. It is hardly necessary to press 
such a meaning. It gives opportunity for the ex- 
tension of princely hospitality to the hero at the 
time of his sorest need and a resting-place for the 
recital of his adventures. 

The Odyssey, one of the morning poems of lit- 
erature, is rich in womanly character. Indeed, it is 
the "eternal feminine" which gives it the height- 
ened approval of every new generation. Even 
Shakespeare, who lacks so little in any respect, 
must yield the palm for womanly character to the 
old Greek bards who sang of Penelope, Arete, and 
Nausicaa. Miranda is often compared to Nau- 
sicaa. Each dwelt in an island home ; both are por- 
trayed in that flying moment of girlhood ; each has 
purity, grace, and freshness, with beauty, reserve, 
and versatility; Shakespeare has drawn Miranda 
as Homer has drawn Nausicaa, without saying 
much of her personal charm, which is left for us 
to interpret, but the simplicity, naivete, and force- 
fulness of the Greek maiden seems to me incom- 
parably superior. Ulysses is himself set apart by 
the word "polutlas," used five times in the Iliad 
and thirty-five times in the Odyssey. He possessed 
the beauty of human form which the Greeks did 

23 



IN PORTS AFAR 

not retain for the women alone, but bestowed upon 
all their heroes. There, by the far-resounding sea, 
we can imagine Robert Browning meeting Eliza- 
beth Barrett, and the address which Ulysses makes 
to Nausicaa is deserving the comment that Homer 
makes of it, "Straightway a gracious and winning 
speech he spake." Beauty was one of the three 
great gifts of the gods to men, and both the man 
who speaks and the woman addressed have it. The 
words need to be winsome; and Homer, whose 
speeches are everywhere wonderful specimens of 
eloquence, has never surpassed the admirably con- 
trived appeal which the shipwrecked hero makes to 
the maiden. Beginning with the assumption that 
she is a goddess, he likens her to Artemis; but 
if she is mortal, her beauty must be the joy of all 
dear to her; anything comparable to it he never 
saw save once, a springing palm at Delos. Rever- 
ence for her beauty is so mingled with his admira- 
tion that it sustains and elevates a flattery which 
would be too open and unblushing in itself. After 
referring to his former importance in the world 
and claiming the right of hospitality, he closes 
with the wish that the gods who persecute him may 
shower upon her the choicest blessings they have 

24 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

in store for maiden virtue and maiden hope,— 
a husbandj home, and fondest mutual affection. 
Only Naomi wishing her daughters-in-law rest in 
the "house of a husband" equals it. Nausicaa is 
not outdone by the "wily" traveler, for when at 
last he departs laden with gifts, she does not under- 
rate the part she took in his welcome, and says 
with sweetness and dignity, 

^'Stranger, farewell! and in thy native land, 
Remember thou hast owed thy life to me." 

Her mother. Arete, as well as the daughter and 
Penelope, are called "/Jao-tAeta," which never occurs 
in the Iliad, and the word betokens the increased 
influence of women due to the absence of their 
husbands at Troy and the cares of state devolving 
upon them. She is even more remarkable than her 
charming daughter. Fifty maids stand attentive 
at her slightest call, and she is well known for 
activity in public uDatters. She is prophetic of the 
modern feminine movement, which really is as old 
as the race, retarded and delayed by the religions 
of the far East, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mo- 
hammedanism, and the dreadful crimes against 
womanhood and childhood which they have counte- 

25 



IN PORTS AFAR 

nanced. Arete shares with Alcinous the govern- 
ment of the realm: 

"From their hearts 
Her children pay her reverence, and the king, 
And all the people, for they look on her 
As if she were a goddess. When she goes 
Abroad into the streets, all welcome her 
With acclamations. Never does she fail 
In wise discernm{ent, but decides disputes 
Kindly and justly between man and man." 

She has the beauty, the position, and occupation of 
the wife, and is the second of the incomparable 
group of women that remain from the Odyssey. 
Penelope belongs later in the Epic, and makes the 
third, and though it is not relevant to discuss her, 
she is the loj^al woman who, through all the heart- 
breaking years, refuses to believe her husband dead, 
and by the far-reaching spell of her own womanli- 
ness holds the wanderer against all Circes and Ca- 
lypsos, who would retain him for their own immor- 
tality. 

The Phasacian episode closes with the people in 
the agora at prayer before their tutelary deity. 
They stand in great fear of some catastrophe if 
they do not obey the god ; this explains the ethical 
purpose of the poet, and doubtless his literary in- 

26 



FOREWORD AND WANDERLUST 

tent is to protect himself against the critics of his 
time; if they ask why the Phasacians can not be 
found, he will reply that perhaps the god de- 
stroyed them; if they are found, then he will be 
able to say that the intercession before the altar 
and the sacrifice propitiated the wrath of Poseidon 
so that they were spared. Poetic interest in the 
fate of the Phseacians is thus secured, and kneeling 
about their patrial altar the people appear as 
unique and winning as the individual characters 
portrayed. The quick setting of the scene in the 
first line of the sixth book, the introduction of the 
goddess in the second line, the splendor of the 
palace, the symmetry, serenity and regularity of 
the garden, the frankness and simplicity of the per- 
sonages, and the religious faith of the people 
sketches a story of animate and inanimate beauty 
which is nowhere surpassed. 

The State universities have almost banished 
Greek from the curricula, and put their entire 
emphasis on "gainful occupations." The sure re- 
mains of Greek is found only in the letters of the 
fraternities. It may be economically profitable, 
but it is a serious educational loss. So long as the 
Parthenon is pictured as the ideal of the world's 

27 



IN PORTS AFAR 

fairest building, the Venus de Milo as its greatest 
model, while the Attic orators, historians, and tra- 
gedians remain unsurpassed, and the Odyssey 
stands the world's greatest imaginative work, a 
man gives proof of his culture by getting ac- 
quainted with and keeping alive his interest in 
Greek. 

After the Phseacians, William James is steady- 
ing, and then we select "Vanity Fair" from the 
ship's library bulging with novels, which we finish 
just in time to ifind the lights on Cape St. Vincent. 



28 



Chapter II 

TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

T^7E traveled to Patras with 2,188 Greeks, 
^ ^ third reservists, going home for war or 
peace. The London negotiations were at a dead- 
lock when we sailed, and the sea a welter of foam- 
ing mountains, whipped into fury by the gales 
which swept up the coast on January 3d and 4th, 
raising the oscillation of the Manhattan sky- 
scrapers to a maximum. Tourists and Greeks alike 
had trouble in finding their sea-legs ; thereafter an 
intimate observation of cabin by steerage and steer- 
age by cabin ripened into mutual understanding 
and good wishes. They were tall, husky laborers, 
such as you see on the huge Keokuk dam and in 
railway construction gangs. They cheered the 
shoals of porpoises at the vessel's side, shouted at 
passing ships, and roared their interest when the 
wireless messages were read to them. One became 
a little ashamed at maritime commercialism when 
seeing them pay over their scanty earnings to hear 

29 



IN PORTS AFAR 

the news. Every man among them had property, 
family, or friends dependent upon their loyalty, 
and the self-sacrificing way they rose to that in- 
definable passion for country and home we call pa- 
triotism, was as sturdy as it was pathetic. 

The first climax came on Saturday night. The 
report of the threatened withdrawal of the Turkish 
envoys from the peace negotiations was read. On 
the instant spahr, saloon, and main decks aft were 
swarming with a veritable mob. The second-cabin 
Greeks pressed up to the rail, and a sea of angry, 
determined faces were silhouetted against the black 
night. A young, muscular chap, a student for a 
few months at Roberts College, foreman in a bridge 
construction gang, climbed up to the hurricane 
deck and made a speech, which he reproduced for 
me on Sunday morning. Flashlight kodak, steno- 
graphic notes, and the voice of Demosthenes would 
be needed to give any hint of its real effect. He 
was waving a photograph when he began, and the 
speech was about as follows: 

"This is a picture of four brothers; three of 
them are now in the army, and I go with the third 
reserves, so all of us will fight the Fez. To-night 
the news is for war ; to-morrow we shall hear again. 

30 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

We want no peace until the Islands, Crete, and 
Salonica belong to Hellas. By the blessed Virgin, 
by the blessed Joseph, by the blessed ikons in the 
churches, by the blessed America, where I have hard 
work [meaning, I think, a good job], plenty to 
eat, and am treated like a free man, I say, 'Down 
with the Fez ; long live Hellas !' " 

Just at this time a Greek flag was flung out on 
the mdzzen, and the 2,188 sang the Greek hymn. 
Then there were shouts like the yelps of wolves 
and the roar of lions, "Down with the Fez !" Then 
eight or ten groups joined hands and with hand- 
kerchiefs, like children, played ring-around-a-rosy ; 
after an hour of effervescence and slow subsidence 
of feeling one of the Greeks raised "America," and 
we heard these aliens sing the new hymn already 
grown dear. 

The Laconia, with another 3,000, was in the 
harbor of Algiers at the same time our ship was 
there. The two ships lay at anchor scarcely 150 
feet apart. After our tour of the city and its 
environs we sat on deck and watched the diff'erent 
groups call to each other. Then, as late in the 
afternoon the Laconia pulled out, the air was rent 
with cannon crackers, torpedoes, and the 5,000 

31 



IN PORTS AFAR 

joined in the Greek hymn. To hear them sing 
made me think of the Germans after the Battle of 
Leuthen. Frederick's army, 28,000 strong, had 
beaten the Austrians with 80,000. It was there 
that Frederick got his schrdge Stellung to work 
with such precision and success as it had not been 
used since Alexander employed it at Arbela. When 
the pursuit was over and the army drew into camp, 
a grenadier started up an old church hymn. The 
military bands fell in, and soon the Tvhole army 
was singing. Many-voiced like the Covenanters, 
it sounded across the hills to the watchful King: 

*'Gib, dass ich's thu' mit Fleiss was mir zu thun gebtihret, 
Wozu mich Dein Befehl in meinem Stande fiihret; 
Gib, dass ich's thue bald, zu der Zeit ich's soil 
Und wenn ich's thu', so gib dass es gerathe wohl." 

The Greek chorals and the German hymns add 
vastly to the enthusiasm of a brigade. The Ger- 
mans sing better; no oratorio can equal the music 
made by a brigade of the German army one night 
at Mainz as they sang "Wacht am Rhein" and 
"Nun danket." But the Greeks sing well, and 
when, at 11.30 o'clock of the day we landed at 
Patras, 670 were entrained and pulled out of the 
depot for the siege of Janina, which three weeks 

32 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

later surrendered, they \^'ere still singing the Greek 
hymn, interspersing it with the yell, "Down with 
the Fez!" We visited the hospital, where 400 
Greek wounded were in charge, saw 500 Turkish 
prisoners in barracks, and after two weeks with 
them we offer two observations: The Greeks have 
the great hatred which is requisite for strong per- 
sonalities and a great nationality — at present it is 
hatred of the Turk ; by and by, if the Home Mis- 
sionary Society reaches them, it will be hatred of 
things un-American. Then they have the great 
love which unifies and clarifies. Now it is for 
Hellas, but by and by it will be love for American 
ideals. The po\^er of this great antipathy and 
affection is primal for future Americanism. Pa- 
triotism burns among them with a steady glow. 
Tens of thousands have hiurried fromt America 
to help drive the Turk out of Europe ; everywhere 
in Patras we were told that the best soldiers in 
the army came from America. They brought with 
them a spirit and fortitude which animated the 
rank and file and reached up to the officers and in- 
spired even the throne itself. The United States 
is the university for the world's democracy. It 
beckons to its educative influence the peoples of all 
3 33 



IN PORTS AFAR 

lands. The Government Is missionary In the Phil- 
ippine Islands, must sooner or later become police- 
man in Mexico and Central America; but teacher, 
i^ith schoolhouse, laboratory, and courses in op- 
portunity for self-help, self-support, self-control, 
the United States has been, is, and must remain. 
It takes a world-voyage to learn how the common 
people yearn to go to America. Here speaks the 
sovereign voice in the coming fortunes of mankind. 
From Patras we sailed up the Ionian Sea past 
Ithaca and Corfu to Brindisi. The rocky coast, 
the ancient Acamania, looks uninhabitable. Far 
across an inlet with our field-glasses we could lo- 
cate Missilonghi. Ithaca deserves the line of Ten- 

^ ' "Among these barren crags." 

Greece, as compared with New England, is bar- 
ren, and that to an lowan is extreme. The flocks 
winding along the steep slopes, or back and forth 
on the zigzags; the lights which twinkle from the 
rocks as day begins to fail; the moan of the sea, 
and the heavy beat of the surf on the rocks is weird 
and fascinating. But the passengers on the Derna, 
an Italian ship, are even more interesting than the 
rocky, precipitous coast, though we stayed late on 

34 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

deck. James Anthony Froude is reported to have 
said once in CaHfornia, when they were trying to 
persuade him to go to Yosemite, that he "would 
rather travel a thousand miles to talk to a sensible 
man than to walk to the end of the street for the 
finest view in America." We had both the view 
and the interesting people on the Derna. When 
the air began to grow chill we adjourned to the 
saloon to cultivate the acquaintance of a dozen 
Italian army officers going home from the conquest 
and occupation of Rhodes, and two nurses of the 
Italian Red Cross service, who had been doing vol- 
unteer work in the Greek hospitals. These latter 
told the most piteous tales of the terrible hunger 
of the Turkish wounded; their last request before 
taking the ansesthetic, and the first after the effects 
of the anaesthesia had passed, was "bread." The 
Turks, according to their report, were simply starv- 
ing on the campaign; an army goes on its belly; 
they simply could not fight. The nurses were evi- 
dently superior in birth and education to the men, 
spoke excellent English, and acted as our interpre- 
ters for a conversation with the senior officer, a 
major, who seemed to regard the war between Italy 
and Turkey as of tremendous import. They were 

35 



IN PORTS AFAR 

all happy over the taking of Tripoli, and they were 
willing to talk about that the whole evening. Bis- 
marck offered Tunis to Italy a generation ago, and 
the Italians have repented their failure to take it 
ever since. Now the Tripolitan war, entered upon 
to protect the Banca de Roma from loss by reason 
of large investments in oases land, has fired the 
national heart and coalesced the different factions 
— Italy has al\\*'ays been a land of faction — into 
something approaching nationality. The nurse re- 
ferred rather proudly to the failure of the pope 
to punish a bishop who had entered into the war 
on the popular side, and the major retorted that 
he "would never be made a cardinal." The women 
dismissed the Methodists as socially unimportant, 
either in America or Italy, but the major set great 
store by their patriotism, because Miss Italia Gari- 
baldi had given her adhesion to the despised sect. 
They scorned both Fairbanks and Roosevelt, but 
the major to my great enjoyment insisted that they 
were Masons, and not Methodists at all. The major 
was plainly less loyal to the Church, and wished to 
discuss the disendowment of certain convents and 
monasteries, which the women, while disdaining any 
interest in the recluse life, sniffed at as though they 

36 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

were listening to a discussion of the Fourth Dimen- 
sion or a plan to erect a signal station to attract 
the attention of the planet Mars. The major went 
further and stated it as an economic problem in 
Italy requiring solution as to how to restrict the 
number who should be permitted to join the mo- 
nastic orders; he wanted a larger navy, a better- 
paid army, and was free to criticise the administra- 
tion for its peace treaty with Turkey and the sup- 
port of the Austrian diplomatic attempt to keep 
Servia from the Adriatic, by Italy. 

Horace described the Romans of his day as "in- 
ferior to sires who were in turn inferior to theirs," 
and as "likely to leave an offspring more degraded 
than themselves." It seems utterly untrue of mod- 
ern Italy. Victor Immanuel, like a Caesar, sleeps 
under the open dome of the Pantheon ; King Hum- 
bert, when suddenly the plague broke out in 
Naples, sent the message to Borodino, where he 
had promised to attend a festa, "At Borodino they 
mjake merry, at Naples they die ; I go to Naples !" 
All their foreign secretaries have stood solidly by 
the Dreibund, and the influence of Germany has 
been steadying and commendable. Tripoli seems 
to us an entire economic loss, but nations, like men, 

37 



IN PORTS AFAR 

find their lives by losing them. Both Italy and 
Greece have a new spirit, and not since the division 
of the Eastern and Western empires have so many 
strong formative influences been felt in the Hellenic 
and Italian peninsulas. 

It is profitless to speculate on what might have 
happened; for example, if Alexander, of Alexan- 
dria, had not been elected to the presidency of the 
Nicene Council ; and if Hosius, of Cordova, had not 
given adhesion to the Athanasian party, and if the 
Arian heresy had gained the decision, what would 
have been the ultimate eff*ect? Would Christianity 
have gone forward by the same tremendous leaps, 
or would it have displayed the lack of passion and 
organizing power so characteristic of modern Arian- 
ism.^ Is there something apostolic and missionary 
in that insoluble mystery we call the Trinity, which 
vitalizes indiff*erence into zeal and gives initiative 
and radiation to missionary eff*ort ? And so we in- 
quire about the Council of Trent. Before the Ref- 
ormation, notably in the eighth, tenth, and twelfth 
centuries, the mediaeval Church was accompanied 
and confronted by tremendous reforming forces. 
Many concessions were wrung from the hierarchy 
by its enemies, and one can not but admire the 

38 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

graceful way the church, prior to the Reformation, 
yielded to the inevitable and was ready to acqui- 
esce in the spirit, "so the church has always 
taught." Want of accommodation to the spirit 
of the age produced the Reformation. The found- 
ing of the Order of the Jesuits, whose members 
speedily gained control of the Council, made the 
body intolerant instead of concessive; then certain 
secular rulers discerned the democratic elements 
which were inherent in the movements for ecclesi- 
astical freedom, and tacitly consented to the reform 
of the church to the standards of St. Francis. 
One is bewildered when he reflects on the unity and 
power of the ecclesia, had the spirit of accommoda- 
tion prevailed and the body remained undivided. 
Whatever else the Reformation accomplished or 
failed to accomplish, it gave what from that day 
we must call the Roman Church a critic and a rival. 
Both Roman Catholic and Protestant were recog- 
nized by the Treaty of Augsburg, and this recog- 
nition brought the doctrines and practices of each 
before the tribunal of public opinion. Henceforth 
a cardinal's cap for a boy of thirteen, and the in- 
dulgence tickets of Dr. Tetzel would be held up to 
the merciless criticism of a rival. The value of 

39 



IN PORTS AFAR 

such criticism is inestimable. In Spain, without 
this corrective influence the condition of the Church 
is less encouraging; but in Italy, pressed upon as 
Romanism is by a vigorous Protestantism, which 
is in hearty alliance with the civil rulers, the refor- 
mation is reforming. Then there is less hostility 
to the spirit of accommodation. The laity have 
been called into greater activity, and that very fact 
reduces ceremonies and ofBcialism to a minimum. 
In America, where the fires of denominational criti- 
cism are hottest, the Roman Church is really the 
strongest. In the same way the Italian Church, 
by reason of the enlarging consciousness of the 
nation, its political affiliation with Germany, the 
swarmis of tourists who treat the pope as one of the 
sights of Europe rather than as the Spiritually In- 
fallible, the break-away of France from even the 
semblance of adherence to the Holy Roman Eccle- 
sia, grows strong, and if the great ecclesiastical 
foundations which imperil the economic independ- 
ence of the kingdom can be dissolved or in some 
way restored to a proper share in the burdens of 
the kingdom, the Italian Church will once more be 
out in the world a disembodied spiritual existence, 
and the Reformation, though late in arriving, will 

40 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

have completed its work. The Italians, like the 
Greeks are in a constant flux coming and going to 
America; it is this which gives Protestantism such 
modifying power. For the first time in a decade 
for the fiscal year which closed with June, 1913, 
the Italians were equaled in the number of imimi- 
grants they sent to America by the Poles; they 
are tied now; hitherto they have led. In the last 
four years 900,000 Italians have arrived in Amer- 
ica, and 500,000 have gone home. A big world- 
education must be involved in this tremendous folk- 
wandering. That this affects the whole fabric of 
Church and State in Italy can not for one moment 
be doubted. 

Apart from the Spanish domination of the papal 
Curia, the merciless way in which certain personal 
acquaintances, modernists, have been compelled to 
see their books go into the Index Ewpurgatorius, 
and the economic problem referred to by the major, 
there is much to commend. All over the East we 
could not but feel that the Latin priests and sister- 
hoods, wherever we met them, were superior to the 
like orders of the Russian Church. They have the 
greatest religious earnestness; they refuse to have 
anything to do with the "civil contract" idea of 

41 



IN PORTS AFAR 

marriage, and the Church remains unquahfied in 
its opposition to divorce. It seems to me idle to 
raise an alarm about the increasing power of po- 
litical Romanism in America, just as it is unthink- 
able to doubt the patriotism of the American 
bishops. We venture the opinion that if the name 
of Woodrow Wilson were substituted for that of 
Queen Elizabeth in the bull of excommunication of 
1570, that not one American bishop would support 
it. Likewise we feel certain that the Archbishop of 
Manila is pained beyond words at the foolish re- 
quests the young clerks in the office of the papal 
ablegate prefer to the Island government in his 
name, and is grieved to the heart at the lapses ac- 
cording to the standards of the English-Irish- 
American priests, of his mestizo and Tagalog 
clergy. No propagandism can turn the ages back- 
ward. They \^ill not preach an infallible Church 
by and by; fewer and fewer will choose patron 
saints ; less and less traditions of doubtful credence 
will find acceptance, and in the good time coming, 
with the election to the papal chair of some liberal 
cardinal the Church will come to be as compre- 
hensive as even Protestants desire. 

With musings like these we bade these new-found 

42 



TWO WEEKS WITH THE GREEK ARMY 

friends good-bye, took a final look at Corfu and a 
turn on the deck, and woke to find the Derna ap- 
proaching Brindisi, whence Pompey set out to 
battle with the pirates, to which Horace came on 
the "excursion," and where Frederick Barbarossa, 
on his crusade, built the great castle which is still 
associated with his name. Brindisi is the naval base 
of Italy, and the castle houses the clerks and 
draughtsmen associated with the department of 
naval construction. It is the port of departure 
for the English mails brought overland by fast 
trains from London and Paris. At Algiers and 
Patras we had gone on shore by tugs and lighters; 
here at Brindisi we part company with docks. Ex- 
cept at Singapore, where the work of dock con- 
struction has been undertaken, and at Calcutta, 
where, if the river is at the right level, you m<ay 
go aboard by a gang-plank ; but everywhere else 
in the East it is the "lighter" that carries you back 
and forth. Only when .you reach Manila and go up 
to a dock once more, do you appreciate your fellow 
countrymen at their full trade value. 



43 



Chapter III 

THE WAYS OF TRADE 

AT Brindisi we first felt the commercial rivalry 
-^ ^ between the English and Germans. Brindisi 
as a port is attempting to rival Naples. The Ger- 
mans use the latter ; it is headquarters for the Nord- 
deutscher Lloyd, while the English, looking for 
the most direct routes and shortest lines, have con- 
centrated at Brindisi. The Peninsular and Ori- 
ental Company are the immediate English repre- 
sentatives. While each port has shipping of all 
nationalities, Brindisi is the one Italian port where 
the Dreibund does not avail. The virulence of the 
fight for trade between the two countries is that they 
are practically one blood, both Protestant, and by 
intermarriage of the Hannoverians, who were Ger- 
man to begin with, and the HohenzoUerns the fami- 
lies are immediately as well as remotely one. By all 
the laws of family com|ity, past friendship, and 
national ideals, they should be allies, and that Eng- 

44 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

land should continue to be fast friends with France 
and Russia, and Germany remain in political alli- 
ance \vith Austria and Italy is one of the anomalies. 
One prefers to think of the brave old days when 
Frederick II of Prussia, now called Der Grosse, 
and his little kingdom was rimmed round by a 
wall of enemies ; Marie Theresa, the Austrian she- 
wolf, in full cry for the recapture of Silesia, the 
French urged on by Madame Pompadour, the Rus- 
sians with Elizabeth, the Saxons, and the Heilige 
Romische Reich, and the Swedes bought up by the 
Russians and the French were all in one vast camp 
against him. Happily for Protestantism, England 
happened to have a king for five years in that crisis. 
We do not refer to George II, then living at Wind- 
sor, though he was full uncle to Frederick, nor in- 
deed to any one of the Georges. They probably 
deserved the scintillating observation of Lord Mac- 
aulay, that "each particular George was a little 
more stupid than the George who immediately pre- 
ceded him." We speak of William Pitt, the only 
king England had in that century, and he, like a 
Methodist preacher, had to move on at the end of 
five years. And Frederick sent to Pitt, asking 
men for his line and money for his war chest. Pitt 

45 



IN PORTS AFAR 

had recruiting troubles of his own, and annual 
deficiencies for his budget also, as even then the 
British war debt was in process of making. But 
Pitt sent him his blundering Hanoverian troops, 
and Frederick loaned him a general who made them 
an army. Then he made a treaty to furnish him 
£600,000 each year for five years. Never, accord- 
ing to Carlyle, did the English get such good fight- 
ing for so small a subsidy. In those five years Pitt 
and Frederick ladeled out destiny to the world for 
five hundred years to come. Pitt conquered in 
America, laid the beginnings of the Indian Empire, 
established England in South Africa, and even cap- 
tured Manila. What a difference it might have 
made if some minister other than Bute had settled 
the details of the treaty. And Frederick did full 
share, for he beat the French at Rossbach, and 
then, one month later, whipped the Austrians at 
Leuthen, and in approximately six months gave the 
Russians such a drubbing at Zorndorf that they 
have respected the Germans ever since. He kept 
Silesia and made good the "brotherhood" plighted 
between the Duke of Silesia and the Marquis of 
Brandenburg 200 years before. And these two na- 
tions ought to be in the same camp now, and yet 

46 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

their diplomacy threatens more to world's peace 
than anything on the chess-board of affairs. Ger- 
many woke to colonizing enterprises late, and has 
found the English ready to maneuver them out 
anywhere they can. The Germans have been fore- 
stalled; it is no idle boast to repeat that ^'Eng- 
land has a man-of-war twenty-four hours from 
everywhere." It \^''ould rejoice me to see the Ger- 
mans take Syria, and England would in the long 
run profit by her consent to this desirable consum- 
mation. 

While the Germans are doing exceedingly well in 
their commercial enterprises, the English have set 
the world an example of the meaning of the 
"mails." The overland mails arrive at Brindisi at 
11 P. M., and supposedly the mail steamer sails 
directly after midnight. The Isis and the Osiris^ 
twin ships of 1,728 tons, which carry the mail to 
Port Said, are built with reference to speed and 
the actuality of not sailing on time. On our par- 
ticular sailing date the mail was forty minutes late 
in arriving at the docks, and unusually heavy. Al- 
most 9,000 sacks were to be transferred to the Isis. 
The porters are each given a lath-shaped tally- 
stick, notched, and about 15 inches long. The 

47 



IN PORTS AFAR 

tally-sheet is a big bucket with at least ten com- 
partiiDents, each containing ten sticks. The buckets 
are tallied on a blackboard. Each porter picked 
up a sack of mail from the wharf, where others de- 
posited them when taken from the train, and as he 
passed the tallyman, was given one of these sticks, 
which he gave up to another tallyman on the ship's 
deck. Two shifts of ten porters each, not counting 
the men who arranged the bags, or who stowed them 
in the hold, made the transfer. The men made a 
round-trip in just one minute, so that each shift 
deposited ten sacks each minute from 11.40 o'clock 
before midnight until the moment we sailed, at 6.55 
A. M. They were exactly 7 hours and 15 minutes 
in transferring the mlail from dock aboard ship. 
We need not have stayed up to see the process; 
we saw it again at Port Said, Aden, and Bombay, 
but nowhere so heavy as at Brindisi and Port Said. 
We left Brindisi full six hours late, but the speed 
of the Isis remedied that. The engineer speeded 
the little flyer up to 21 knots per hour, and we 
pulled into Port Said after 47 hours "on time." 
The mail is there transferred to the P. & O. steam- 
ship, which had sailed from the Thames the week 
preceding. That "mail" is a world institution, and 

48 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

the sure bond of union between the tight little island 
and its far-flung battle-line of dune, headland, and 
fertile empires in the south continent. It is the 
letters, papers, books, and packages which the mail 
carries that keep alive the sense of home and braces 
the young Englishmen the world over to put on 
his dresscoat and ^^dine.'' No matter how remote 
from men and women of his own stock, these things 
he does: he dines, reads the Tim^s, Telegraph, or 
Mail, and dates all mortal events froml the time he 
"came out" or "went home." The basic fact of 
English solidarity is "the mail." 

So we rush forward on the Isis past Corfu again, 
see Argolis, alongside Zante, through the Stroph- 
ades, following the general coast line and laying a 
course so as to pass Crete on the west and south, 
with islands, lights, and ships to give interest to 
every waking moment. Contrary to all the pre- 
dictions by "old sailors," "experienced travelers," 
and daring tourists in charge of "Cook," the Isis 
rode like a duck, and while the tremendous speed 
caused a good deal of vibration, she was steady, 
the small group of passengers friendly, and the 
voyage 

"Over the sea, past Crete," 
4 49 



IN PORTS AFAR 

to the land of the lotus-eaters and the Nile was all 
too short. The massive statue of De Lesseps 
greeted us at the entrance to the harbor. It was 
dedicated with great pageantry, the Emperor Na- 
poleon III and his empress, Eugenie, attended by 
M. Oliver, heralded in his day as a great minister 
of finance, attended the fete. The statue is all 
that remains to associate the big ditch with the 
French people. They began the Panama Canal 
also, and our countrymen are just finishing it. 
Some plodding persistence, somie final tenacity the 
French seem to lack. They made an expedition to 
Egypt in 1798. It was thus that Napoleon came 
to be associated with the two other great generals 
of the ages, Alexander and Caesar, in the affairs 
of Egypt. The directory planned the campaign 
with a double object in view: to open a way for 
attacking the English in India, and to remove 
Bonaparte, for a time at least, from France. The 
independent behavior of that general in his Italian 
campaigns, his genius for military affairs, and his 
ambition, which could not be entirely concealed un- 
der a studied simplicity of manners, rendered his 
presence dangerous to their authority. Had Na- 
poleon stayed in Egypt, he would have antedated 

50 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

the English colonizing policy. His constructive 
talents were shown there in striking ways ; he caused 
strict justice to be practiced between man and man, 
gave free passage to pilgrims going to and from 
Mecca, and encouraged all kinds of commerce. He 
gave land to the slaves, to be cultivated on their 
own account. He granted equal rights of inherit- 
ance to the children of the same parents, and im- 
proved the condition of the women by giving them 
a certain portion of the husband's property at his 
decease. He endeavored to restrain polygamy, en- 
couraged marriage between his soldiers and the 
natives, and established schools for the instruction 
of the young French, Copts, and Arabs in geog- 
raphy, mathematics, and the French language, and 
was a friend to shows, public games, and other 
diversions. Here we have the origin of the great 
civilizing movements felt in the East to-day. Con- 
templating the effects of his invasion, it may be 
questioned whether his influence was greater upon 
the East or upon Europe. The Egyptian expe- 
dition cam,e like a thunderbolt upon that part of 
the world. To them it had remained unchange- 
able, and seemed inaccessible to modification. Like 
all heathenism, the petty nations subject to the 

51 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Sublime Porte believed themselves invincible. The 
exaggerated opinion they held of their own im- 
portance was necessarily strengthened by the con- 
duct of European powers who for a long series of 
years permitted the Barbary pirates to make war, 
impose tribute and ransom upon every government 
of Christendom with impunity. The successes of 
the French in Egypt caught the imagination of 
the Mussulmien, and their experiences taught them 
to appreciate the mjilitary superiority of the peoples 
of the West. Then came the United States, and 
Decatur finished \^hat Bonaparte had begun. 

The DeLesseps statue was dedicated in 1869. 
One year after, Napoleon III withered at Sedan, 
the Germans were in full swing for Paris, and on 
a gorgeous autumn day out at Versailles, on the 
steps of the great palace of Louis XIV, Bismarck, 
Von Moltke, and William I promulgated with much 
blare of trumpets and many "Lebe hochs" the 
German Empire. 

You land by the Cook's boat and learn once for 
all that harbor graft is peculiarly Oriental. That 
at Port Said is typical ; rowers, boat, health officer, 
customs, and viseing of passports brings it up to 
the high level of its justly celebrated sister port 

62 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

Jaffa. That will be the one and only appearance 
of a "passport" to be "viseed" if you learn quickly 
at school, as we suspect you do. The single ex- 
cellence of Port Said, beyond giving entrance to 
the Suez Canal, is that it is four hours only from 
Cairo, whither by fast train de luxe we are whirled ; 
along the canal embankment, steam shovels pump- 
ing its enlargement; stretches of desert, land of 
Goshen, Tel-el-Kebir, the thousand quaintnesses 
of Oriental life, the miultiform devices for lifting 
the Nile water to the desert sand, the long caravans 
of camels, the nodding palms, the pyramids which 
thirty miles away from Cairo you see lifting them- 
selves above the plain, and the mysterious Nile, are 
like flashes of holy vision, quick passing and 
abiding. 

We followed the regular order in Cairo : saw the 
mosques, the museum, old Cairo, rode camels out 
to the pyramids, saw the secretary bird in the zo- 
ological gardens, took street-car to the shapely, 
shining obelisk of Heliopolis, and were properly 
impressed by the sleeping cave of Joseph and 
Mary, the place where Pharaoh's daughter drew 
Moses from the water, and shopped to our pocket- 
book's discontent in the bazaars. But we were more 

53 



IN PORTS AFAR 

interested in the great dams the EngHsh have 
builded, and the canals which lead the water for 
irrigation purposes over millions of acres that pre- 
vious to the English occupation were desert ; in the 
electric lights they have introduced, the trams they 
have installed, the fine miacadam roads they have 
laid, and the eye clinics they maintain. What an 
uproar it made in the world when Gladstone bom- 
barded Alexandria ! He had his hand forced in 
the Egyptian matter. He had spent his life in 
opposition to the Jingo, and when, on a sudden, he 
seemed to throw away the traditions of a lifetime, 
the world stood aghast. His enemies cursed him 
for what they privately supposed was his political 
sagacity, and his friends hesitated, fearing that he 
had been overwhelmed by some strange lust or 
greed of power. The English never forgave him 
for the death of Gordon, but if any work of merit 
might atone for the delays which caused the Khar- 
toum tragedy, the results of the English occupation 
of Egypt should be counted full atonement. Once 
we heard him speak in the House of Commons; 
that was worth going to England to hear. He was 
just coming back with a liberal majority for his 
last premiership ; he was no longer the young man 

54 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

who had phrased the adjectives still in use, "The 
Unspeakable Turk," and changed the Roman ora- 
tor's platform "Civis Romanus Sum'' into "I am 
an Englishman," to the delight of the galleries and 
the discomfiture of the Tories; but his voice still 
had the bugle call in it, and there spake a man 
with "authority." The old scribes of the days of 
Christ discovered the note of authority in Christ's 
teaching, and hasted from His presence, saying, 
"He taught as one that had authority." That 
authority of character and commission, the only 
"authority" there is, Christ had and Gladstone 
had. The ordination of our deacons and elders 
always appealed to me. It is worshipful to hear 
in some great church, packed for the Conference 
occasion, a bishop \^ith a melodious voice say, 
"Take thou authority." As a matter of ritual, 
we all assent to it, but as more than that we should 
all object. Authority is neither a thing that a 
man can have by natural descent, nor by gift; it 
is a matter of character like Christ, and Gladstone 
accumulated his by fifty years spent in the service 
of every good cause. Then for a few brief years 
he was the people of England, Lotze says the 
soul is where it acts, and with the commission of 

55 



IN PORTS AFAR 

the English Commons behind him, he did such an 
act of high sovereignty as no premier had accom- 
plished since William Pitt. The immediate effect 
was the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir, but the actual out- 
come was the suppression of Madhist fanatics from 
Cairo to the Soudan, the better economic conditions 
which no^^' bless the Egyptian fellahin, the trans- 
formation of several palaces into modem hotels, 
and the two great dams across the Nile at Cairo 
and Assouan, which alone make the bombardment 
of Alexandria with its consequent occupation of 
Egypt the crowning act of Gladstone's career. 
Of course to-day, with improved facilities for 
travel, land values immensely enhanced, trade 
flourishing, order maintained, and the beginnings 
of decency and sanitation inaugurated, the cry 
goes up, "Egypt for the Egyptians." It is, of 
course, assumed that those raising this cry are the 
"Egyptians." They have not forgiven Roosevelt 
yet for having told them point blank out that in 
assassinating public officials they were using "li- 
cense," not liberty. 

Three celebrities we saw in Cairo, two of whose 
names all readers will recognize. The first was Gen- 
eral Lord Kitchener, adviser to His Majesty the 

56 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

Khedive, Consul General and English Government 
combined. We saw several "residents;" each of 
the native Indian States has one, and whoever may 
happen to be called king, khedive, rajah, maha- 
rajah, nawab, gaekwar, or begum,, be sure before- 
hand that he is actually subordinate to the afore- 
said "resident." Lord Kitchener is chief of all 
the residents, though the Indian viceroy might 
equal him. The khedive's part In the Egyptian 
Government is to go to mosque, and spend the 
millions \^ith which a paternal English Government 
solaces his idleness. General Kitchener, like all the 
residents, is quartered in great state. The doors 
to his audience chamber are kept by many attend- 
ants, and he is hedged in by the pomp and circum- 
stance in which Oriental and European peoples seem 
to delight. He was in uniform with yards of gilt 
and gold brocade, a decoration on his breast, and in 
the moment of our view was in the act of stepping 
into a State carriage. An escort waited upon his 
going, and yet, with all his equipage, he did not ex- 
ceed in fuss and feathers Lord Hardinge at Delhi. 
His predecessor in this high office was Lord Cromer. 
These two represent England's contribution to the 
pacification, development, and control of Egypt. 

67 



IN PORTS AFAR 

It was our good fortune also to see General Por- 
forio Diaz, former president of Mexico, walking 
on the porch of the Shepheards. The old general 
was rather short of stature, and looked and walked 
as did the former president of Iowa Wesleyan, the 
late Senator Harlan, one timje Secretary of the In- 
terior in Lincoln's Cabinet. He had an attendant 
walking on either side of him: a physician and a 
valet, we were told. He walked back and forth 
several times on the long balcony overlooking the 
street, as those who have been at Shepheards will 
remember. Doughty old veteran he looked. My 
predecessor calls him "Diaz the immortal." That 
was before the recent revolution, however. Diaz 
is to Mexico what Charles Magnus was to Ger- 
many: a far-flashing beacon illuminating the cen- 
turies of ignorance which preceded him, and the 
darkest century of the Dark Ages which followed 
him. Diaz was preceded by lawlessness and fol- 
lowed by anarchy. Madero had the spirit but not 
the strength of a great ruler. We shall yet ap- 
plaud President Wilson for refusing to recognize 
Huerta as even provisional president, and the 
policy of refusing recognition to military usurpers 
will make an end of many "revolutions" in our 

58 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

sister republics to the south. What a pretty pennj?- 
we would have given for Diaz's thoughts as he 
promenaded up and down the hotel veranda! 

The third of these men, though only a Cairo 
guide, was as interesting to me. He had been to 
Mecca, and was therefore hadji, and had the def- 
erence of his achievement accorded to him by all 
those who appreciated what it means to drink from 
the holy well and wash in the water of the Caaba. 
He wore a purple turban, and was our guide for 
five days; walked with us through the mosques of 
Hasan, Iben Tulone, and the alabaster one of Mo- 
hammed Ali; recounted reverently and, at our 
request, briefly the miracles of Mohammed, the 
proofs of them, and showed us with becoming 
dignity the university where all the professors 
teach the Koran, and then showed us about 
the library, where the only book, in many edi- 
tions and languages, is the Koran. We talked 
much also of the present status of the faith of 
Islam. He had but one wife, deeming one sufficient 
for caring for his house. Did not Mahomet keep 
women too much in subjection, and will not his re- 
ligion fail because of this very subjection? "Allah 
made them so," was his Delphic response. Again, 

59 



IN PORTS AFAR 

we asked him about the Turk "raising a holy war" 
— that scare with which the daily papers regale us 
with every disaster to Turkish policy or arms. The 
hadji slowly shook his head and replied dolefully; 
"Allah is great," said he. "The Turk is brought 
very low. Twenty millions of the Faithful in India 
and North Africa would give their lives for the 
Faith ; but of what avail ? There is no war equip- 
ment for them. Forts, battleships, and munitions 
of war are all in the hands of the Unbeheving 
powers; one Maxim would shoot do\\^ii a thousand 
of the Faithful before they could rush up a para- 
pet and capture it. Allah only is great !" 

Egypt has never recovered from the plague of 
flies; and had another of those enumerated, in- 
stead of boils or murain of beasts, been granulated 
eyelids, it would confirm the whole seven mentioned 
in the Exodus and establish the passing of the 
Red Sea for good measure. The nation was verg- 
ing toward blindness when the English came, and 
one of the most beautiful things the missionaries 
do is to treat those poor, afflicted human eyes. 
There can be no question that flies carry several 
forms of eye infection as well as the typhoid and 
other enteric germs. The United States, by sani- 

60 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

tation and war on contagious diseases, has made 
Manila, filthy in 1898 as compared with Cairo, a 
miuch wholesomer place. But, then, the Americans 
have been much more abrupt and drastic in their 
methods in handling alien peoples, though always 
really democratic, than the English, who bear 
themselves with much greater seeming deference to 
native custom and opinion. But England is the 
first medical missionary and, like some older prac- 
titioner, is just a little slow to learn from your 
Uncle Sam, fresh from medical college, with an ex- 
perience as interne in a modern hospital, and as 
health officer extraordinary in Cuba, Porto Rico, 
Panama, and the Philippines. We have studied 
hymns for years, as most pastors do, and supposed 
we knew the literary merit and didactic value of 
the lines: 

"At even, ere the sun was set, 

The sick, O Lord, around Thee lay; 
O with what divers pains they met! 
O with what joy they went away!" 

But the eye-sick of Egypt and the leprous poor 
of Syria, the famine-smitten of India, and the 
pestilence-stricken of Burmah and China gives the 
hymn a place, not because it is fine poetry, but 

61 



IN PORTS AFAR 

because of its underlying actuality. It is one 
phase of Oriental life embodied in literature, and 
flowing back from literature to bless life with hope 
and healing. They sing that hymn dozens of 
times where we do not sing it once. 

The two speculative questions which assault the 
mind in Egypt are the age of man on this planet, 
and whether derived from a common stock so re- 
motely as to constitute five independent breeds, or 
did they bear apart when, as creatures endowed 
with mental life, they began to be influenced by 
innumlerable conditions of environment that still 
operate upon us.? 

Anthropological studies have long since demon- 
strated the enormous antiquity of man. However, 
the dates of a geologist necessarily can not be fixed, 
but move within the widest limits. From the archae- 
ological standpoint we begin in Egypt. Great 
tribute must be paid by the scientist to the early 
dwellers along the Nile. The Egyptians early de- 
termined the length of the year as 365 days, not 
being aware of the one-quarter, or nearly one- 
quarter, of the day additional. They divided this 
year, divorcing it from the phases of the moon, into 
twelve months of thirty days each, with an inter- 

62 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

calary period of five days at the end of the year. 
This, the first practical calendar ever evolved by 
an ancient people, remained an achievement un- 
paralleled in any other civilization. Now, we know 
that in the period from 140-144 A. D. the calen- 
dar exactly coincided with the season, and that in 
one of the years mentioned the rising of Sothis 
took place on the first day of the calendar year. 
An entire revolution had been completed at that 
time. Of course, the revolution began 1,460 years 
earlier; viz., in 1320 B. C. The next earlier revo- 
lution would therefore have begun in 2780 B. C. 
But it is impossible that this calendar was intro- 
duced as late as the twenty-eighth century B. C, 
for that was in the midst of the highest culture of 
the old kingdom. Moreover, the intercalary days 
are mentioned in what they call the pyramid manu- 
scripts, far older than the old kingdom. Then, 
as it was doubtless formulated at a time when the 
seasons coincided, roughly at least, with nature, we 
must go back another 1,460 years, and more likely 
2,920 years, so that the oldest date in history is 
at least 4240 B. C, and altogether likely 6700 
B. C. But the cavemen go back to 25000 B. C, 
and even employing the oldest date, we shall have 

63 



IN PORTS AFAR 

historical records only for one-third of man's life 
on the planet. 

The hypothesis of the original unity of the race 
can not be disproved. There is an aversion to its 
acceptance on the part of scientific inquirers, based 
on certain forcible natural analogies, yet in our 
judgment inadequate to compel belief in a plurality 
of primitive types. There is a general equation 
of the human being with several constants and 
many variables. In our ignorance of this equation, 
not knowing the ratio of the constants to the vari- 
ables, nor the method of its physical realization, 
we assume, just as in the case of plants, an original 
generic form, and the races as modifications of the 
general type. No race possesses any physiologic- 
ally important organ denied to another ; the normal 
number of multiple parts, such as fingers and toes, 
is the same in all five; no single joint of a skeleton 
is formed or situated on diff^erent plans in diff^erent 
races; all are erect and capable of speech; there 
are no distinguishing differences in physiological 
processes, duration of life, pregnancy, attainment 
of puberty; and finally the diff^erent races can be 
propagated by crossing. The hypothesis that the 
white man, by the blazing sun of the tropics, dark- 

64 



THE WAYS OF TRADE 

ened into the Negro is natural and easy, and its 
counterpart is that the primeval black man, under 
favorable conditions, has been transformed into a 
Caucasian. We are told that the facts do not 
justify these expectations, and it is replied that 
the whole of the continent of North America, ex- 
tending through all the zones, was inhabited by a 
cinnamon race, in spite of several modifications, 
identical throughout, to which only the tribes lying 
in the polar region do not belong. In the tropical 
zone of the old world, going from west to east, we 
find Negro, brown Malay, white Caucasian races 
living under hardly distinguishable climatic condi- 
tions. Then we are told that — inter-racial mar- 
riages excluded — the Caucasian does not take on 
the kinky hair, velvety complexion, and shape of 
the head of the Negro, nor the Negro the Cau- 
casian cast of countenance, though in a colder and 
uncongenial clime. But is this not somewhat beg- 
ging the question ? Then the Hebrew type, though 
dispersed to all climates, has been preserved un- 
changed. Now, if we knew the value of the con- 
stants in the generic equation, these facts might 
settle it, but when we are asked to throw out all 
past inter-racial marriages in order to establish five 
5 65 



IN PORTS AFAR 

races, we are asked to assume a factor little prece- 
dent In nature. Mestizos of a hundred living va- 
rieties give denial to it. The easy answer to this 
unending speculation is that of St. Paul, "And 
hath made of one blood all nations of men for to 
dwell on all the face of the earth." 



66 



Chapter IV 

THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

T T is not easy to reach the Holy Land, The jour- 
-■- ney from Egypt to Palestine is the matter of 
a night's travel. Palestine touches Egypt, and 
though it does not lie in the commercial zone, the 
strange magnetism that centuries have not short- 
circuited still pulls a throng of pilgrims to It year 
by year. Half a dozen lines of steamers ply up 
and down the coast, stopping when the weather 
permits at Jaffa, and at Haifa and Beirut. We 
went by the Kosseir, of the Khedivial Line, leaving 
Port Said late on Sunday afternoon. She is 
manned by Scotch officers, Italian stewards, and 
carries various nationalities as a deck crew. Two 
Mormon missionaries, of the Southern Iowa-Mis- 
souri branch ; an ecclesiastic of the English Church ; 
a young Methodist preacher, "fellow" at Drew, 
with his wife, besides a large Hamburg- American 
party, several Cook and Aboosh escorted travelers 
made up the passenger list. The night was gor- 

67 



IN PORTS AFAR 

geous with stars, the yellow waves danced in the 
moonlight, the sea was on its good behavior, and 
walking down the ship's side on a stairway at Jaffa 
to the lighter was easy as any landing could well 
be. The passengers were finally sorted out and pro- 
rated by the various tourist agencies, and after a 
hurried visit to our hotel we were off for a ride 
about Jaffa, along roads fragrant with orange or- 
chards, into various hospices, past Tabitha's Foun- 
tain, and lingering long in the traditional "house 
of Simon the tanner, who dwelt by the seaside." 
The port at least is beyond question the one where 
Solomon landed the beams of cedar for the temple, 
and up the steep banks the workmen dragged them. 
The Emperor Vespasian sacked the town, and the 
banner of Richard the Lion-hearted flaunted from 
its citadel. The purpling dawn, the olive trees, 
miles of orange groves with their "apples of gold 
in pictures of silver," the golden sheen of midday, 
the sun glinting on the violet hills, with the opal- 
escence of the sky as evening gathered, would have 
given a hundred pictures to Turner. It was a day 
of days. Grove and sea, sky and mountain, and 
the pageantry of nature inwrought into the fabric 
of Christianity were all as Jesus saw them). We 

68 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

had not yet felt the disappointment and disillusion- 
ment which the cluttering of churches, mosques, 
monasteries, hospices, and memorials on every little 
plot of daylight is sure to bring. The Christian 
faith is most expansive in open spaces, and needs 
for its setting flowers, the rustle of palms, the 
soughing of great cedars, and a skyline rising to 
the mountains. These Jaffa gives. 

The railroads have broken into Syria in three 
places : from Jaffa to Jerusalem, from Mount Car- 
mel to Galilee, and thence on up to Damascus, and 
again from Beirut to Damascus. Then there are 
macadam roads fromi Jerusalem to Jericho, She- 
chem and Tiberias, and winding around Bethany, 
Bethlehem, and the great ridge to the east 
called the Mount of Olives. These latter were 
built to render the visit of the German Emperor 
pleasurable. These new roads are not as lamentable, 
to our thinking, as some travelers would have us be- 
lieve. They help to give you a view of "The Land 
of the Book" through modern perspective. To 
ride a donkey across the valley of Ajalon may aid 
to keep the perfunctory view of the famous battle, 
but to trundle by at a horse-car rate on a railway 
train means definite awakenment to the hyperbole of 

69 



IN PORTS AFAR 

the Oriental mind. All the commentaries you have 
studied and the multitudinous tales of travelers you 
have read do not impress you with the vast imag- 
ination of the Eastern literature like the first hour 
on a railroad train from Jaffa to Jerusalem. We 
saw the sun well down toward the horizon shining 
on the wondrous valley where Israel and the Amor- 
ites in battle's wrinkled front fought by thousands. 
The parade-ground of the Michigan National 
Guard at Ludington would accommodate armies 
ten times the muster that could crowd themselves 
into rank in the valley of Ajalon. The poetry 
of that story, not the event it pictures ; the perfec- 
tion of its beauty, not its scientific veracity, — is 
the pledge of its perpetual recital. The deeper we 
enter into it as poetry, the closer we come to its 
truth. The Old Testament ought to be read in 
this way. That old library of thirty-nine books 
is not a collection of documents from a recorder's 
ofiice — old deeds musty and faded, but accurate. 
It is the story-loving Orientalist exciting his hear- 
ers with the glamour, imagery, and magniloquence 
of the East. 

Once we wrote for the Methodist Review a pro- 
posed explanation of the meaning of the "double 

70 



95 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

in Isaiah, and commented upon it, like the refer- 
ence Bibles do, in explaining the passage, "Turn 
to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope," by saying 
that it was an urgent request on the part of the 
prophet that they should look in the "strong-box" 
where the old keepsakes and documents were kept, 
and that there they would find the "quittance," 
"receipt," "double," which at the coming of the 
jubilee would give back the patrimony for years 
alienated. How the Hebrew scholars did pull their 
lexicons on the Scotch (not the Irish) Kelley — and 
the poor writer ! It was "not in the dictionary" — 
well, of course, only by the dictionary could it be 
known. But if you should see some old hill family 
in Bethlehem telling over its treasures, counted 
generation after generation, you will know the 
truth even if it is not in the dictionary, and you 
may grow bold and tell the "graybeards" in the 
theological seminaries that we are going to make 
the lexicons from the Book. The danger of a dic- 
tionary is that it tends to become static. That is 
the trouble with a "creed." The Council of Trent, 
for example, added a dozen articles to the Nicene 
creed, thinking they were helping to elucidate, but 
in reality adding details already insufferably in- 

71 



IN PORTS AFAR 

numerable. It is the purpose of all definition to 
limit and circumscribe: Jesus said, "The Kingdom 
of heaven is like ;" and He said, "I am the Light of 
the world." The poetry, gorgeous fancy, superb 
imagery of that brief assertion dominates all cen- 
turies since. But literalists would have the solar 
system dislocated because as Israel moved to battle 
the warriors sang an old song, — 

"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; 
And thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon." 

The conflict was shortened by the day, not the day 
by the conflict. There was time, as there always 
is in God's plan, for victory. 

And so we "go up to Jerusalem." The journey 
runs at first through cultivated fields. Green 
stretches of growing grain and vegetable gardens 
delight the eye. The orange trees hang heavy with 
fruit, the palms nod their tall plumes, and olive 
groves with their delicate shades relieve the raucous 
green. But the scene takes character from the 
camels, donkeys, flocks of goats, peasants in skirts, 
and white-robed women with veiled faces. Cactus 
and eucalyptus remind you of the semi-tropical 
lands, but the folks and animal- world nominate the 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

straggling, unkempt, stately East. As we leave 
the city we enter upon the Plain of Sharon, famous 
in song and story. It is at once garden and battle- 
field. Some German colonists, Templers, intending 
to reform the world to the standards of the Old 
Testament prophets after the lovely harvests are 
all gathered, keep every available rood with the 
most scrupulous care. The armies that have fer- 
tilized its acres with their blood, and whitened it 
with their bleaching bones, would fill a catalogue. 
Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Roman, 
Austrian, German, Spanish, French, English have 
all marched, charged, won or lost on this ensan- 
guined plain. Here the royal poet of the school of 
Solomon sang, "I am the Rose of the Plain," as 
millions of the same "roses" we see, the narcissi, 
bared their soft breasts to the gentle wind and 
flushed the whole plain with their crimson loveli- 
ness. The mountains of Judea stretched along the 
eastern horizon. The ancient church at Lydda and 
the noble tower commemorative of the forty mar- 
tyrs at Ramleh, Mizpah, and the Ancient Gezer 
lift themselves into the landscape and above the 
surrounding villages as the train moves forward. 
Many points of interest recall the Crusaders, who 

73 



IN PORTS AFAR 

with rich blazonry and in full panoply of mail 
marched across the plain : Godfrey, Frederick Bar- 
barossa, Richard, Saladin are the men of blood 
and iron that modern annals have not allowed tc 
grow dim. Every great rock and almost each 
scraggy oak has a name or association, and the 
ride, at first a slow ascent, becoming a heavy grade, 
needing double engines to accomplish, gives happy 
time to recall the ancient lore and allow fancy and 
memory to fling about the names and places their 
subtle pageantry. The impregnability of almost 
every point against assault, except by famine and 
disease, is seen at a glance. "The strength of the 
hills" was the happy portion of Judah and Ben- 
jamin. We enter the sacred city through the 
breach in the wall alongside the Jaffa gate, made 
to accommodate the kaiser, and just inside we find 
the Grand Hotel, with its welcome of a blazing fire, 
grateful in that altitude of 2,500 feet, after the 
warm airs of Jaffa and Cairo. We hear the Mc- 
Watters Quartet sing in St. Andrew's Church, and 
sit late into the night planning our eight days in 
the out-of-door spaces of the Holy Land. 

It is easy to go to Jericho since the macadam 
road was built for the Kaiser. After all, he did not 

74 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

go lest a gainsaying diplomatic world should say, 
"Let him go to Jericho." Likewise the Mount of 
Olives, Shechem, and Bethlehem are easy of access^ 
because the Turk built the roads to them in hos- 
pitality to their last friend and ally. We went 
to the three Jerichos: saw Elisha's Fountain, drove 
across the valley — where now utter desolation ob- 
tains, rode a boat in the swift current of the Jor- 
dan, went swimming in the Dead Sea, saw Horeb 
and Pisgah, wondered if that might be the Mount 
of Temptation, followed the devious windings of 
the brook Cherith, and climbed on foot the weary, 
precipitous path up which Christ toiled for the 
final scenes on Calvary. We stopped at Bethany, 
saw the reputed tomb of Lazarus and the neglected 
home of the two sisters ; we also went to Bethlehem, 
visited the Church of the Nativity and the well at 
the gate, for whose sweet water King David yearned 
and whither fought his "worthies" and came back 
with it ; meditated with delight upon the "Field of 
Boaz;" rode donkeys about the walls of Jerusa- 
lem, visited the Mosque of Omar, descended into 
King Solomon's stables, saw his quarry, Bethesda, 
the tombs of the kings, surveyed the hills to the 
north of the city, from whence the successful attack 

75 



IN PORTS AFAR 

finally came ; saw the Dead Sea, the Jordan Vallej^, 
and the Holy City from the great rocky ridge 
called the Mount of Olives; we too searched out 
the "stations of the cross" located by photogra- 
phers some years ago, where the light would be 
sure to give good films, and turned sadly from the 
Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where an obese Rus- 
sian priest, standing in the veritable "sepulcher," 
took "alms" of five roubles each from three hundred 
Mujik pilgrims that afternoon; and sought out 
what is colloquially called "Gordon's Calvary," be- 
cause the great Englishman, on his way to Khar- 
toum, pronounced it, in his judgment, the true site. 
The "Wailing Place," which we saw on Friday, 
in a pelting rain, is the scene which beggars all 
description. We had visited "the upper room" and 
the house of Caiaphas, and came by narrow streets, 
filthy beyond words, to the abrupt fortress-like wall 
adjacent to the temple inclosure. Here a crowd 
of Jews, both men and women, were gathered to 
lament the fallen greatness of their beloved Zion; 
they looked poor, distrait, and hopeless; they 
wailed, read out of greasy-looking books, patted 
the wall affectionately, kissed it, prayed, and one 
old man with a long beard, his back to the wall, 

76 



/ 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

fists thrown out and menacing, cursed rather than 
prayed. Meanwhile beggars phed their trade, and 
the walls made no answer. No wonder some ge- 
ographers think this wailing-place the valley of 
Baca. They have been doing that every Friday 
since Titus battered down the walls, and the in- 
rushing Roman cohorts tore the crown of beauty 
from the queenly head of Jerusalem; 1,843 years 
is a long time through which to perpetuate the 
tragedy of degeneracy and greed, and the folly 
of factions, as illustrated in the decline and fall 
of the once proud city. But older than that is the 
Supper which forty years earlier in the upper 
room He taught us to keep. 

There is nothing in the Holy Land that has the 
atmosphere of Protestant Christianity save what 
is still out of doors. The Mount of Olives, or so 
much of it as is still unbuilt upon; Gordon's Cal- 
vary, with its "place of the skull," and "the sepul- 
cher in the garden" outside the present north gate, 
the Plain of Sharon, and the Field of Boaz, ad- 
jacent to Bethlehem, hint at what the land was 
when the drama of humanity centered in such un- 
forgettable scenes. The flowers, stars, mountains, 
and human hearts that "smile and weep" alone do 

77 



IN PORTS AFAR 

not change. Not in the myriad commemorative 
buildings, but along the rugged paths and ancient 
highways we see with our hearts 

"Those holy fields 
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nail'd 
For our advantage on the bitter cross" — 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, on the con- 
trary, raises an interrogation as to whether it is 
Christian or pagan. The Sultan of Turkey owns 
it, and Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Armenians, Copts, 
and even the Anglicans celebrate the mass in it. 
The simple-hearted kiss the stairs and stones, kneel, 
weep, walk upstairs and downstairs with business- 
like devotion, put relics on the altars to be sprin- 
kled with holy water by the priests, and express in 
a thousand different ways the nameless thirst and 
passion of the soul for goodness, holiness, and God. 
We are certain of only one fact; that is, that no 
one knows the site of the crucifixion; and it is 
almost equally certain that it was not where now 
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher rises. The at- 
tempt to show that the old wall was near at hand 
and within, is clumsy in the extreme. But if it 
were, Christianity is not a superstition, nor does it 

78 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

get its character from altars of gold and pealing 
organs, nor chanting choirs. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, 
St. John's, St. Mark's and all the other saints have 
justification, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
is a century-long misrepresentation of Jesus and 
His followers, and seems to be an occasion of in- 
fidelity, and not of faith. It is superior to Monte 
Carlo because it appeals to the weary-hearted, sick, 
and contrite, but it is a sad travesty upon belief 
in the self-sacrificing Savior, who was crucified 
under the open sky, appeared to many in the walks 
and highways about Jerusalemi, and in His human 
life loved the sky, the mountain, and the lake. 

Out at Bethlehem, where there is some little vari- 
ation to the utter poverty of the land by reason of 
the mother-of-pearl industry, a Syrian said to me, 
"Would that either the Kaiser or the King would 
take Syria." The war between the Balkan allies 
and the Turks had just been renewed, the flood of 
Turkish brass coins from Tripoli had greatly re- 
duced the purchasing power of the currency, and 
my orator was complaining about the enormities 
of taxation as practiced at Bethlehem. We heard 
the same wish expressed in more responsible quar- 
ters. Many look at Egypt and yearn for the same 

79 



IN PORTS AFAR 

regeneration the English have wrought there, and 
thinking that only the English can bring it to 
pass. Others credit the improvement in Palestine 
in the years since the German Emperor was there 
to the Germans, and wish for the Kaiser. The Ger- 
mans ought to have Syria, and they would have it 
were it not for the desolating fear in England that 
it would mean the loss of the Suez Canal, and thus 
their route to India and Australia. The confused 
thinking that the German military training is only 
to make soldiers and incite the young Germans to 
martial ambition, obtains in America as well, but 
it is an obsession in England. If the English 
could appreciate what an asset such a taking over 
would be to world-peace, they would encourage, 
not look askance at it. An economic revival would 
begin the first year of the German occupation ; the 
second would see the desert of Tekoa irrigated by 
Jordan water through all its wide extent; they 
would plant it to cabbages, raise vegetables, pas- 
ture it with kine and swine, make all kinds and 
varieties of wnrst, and get great profit for them- 
selves and all mankind. If either the Germans or 
English take Palestine, let us hope they will re- 
quire building permits for any new church, mosque, 

80 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

convent, or mjonastery, to be granted only by 
Reichstag or Commons, who we shall hope will be 
opposed thereto, and perhaps denude the Mount of 
Olives of every non-economic building which now 
disfigures it. At the same time corporation taxes 
ought to fall with size and certainty of non-evasion 
upon the indolent brotherhoods that fatten upon 
the simple-hearted from every land who seek to 
renew for themselves in Palestine the imperishable 
miracle of Christ formed within us the hope of 
glory. 

The nonconformist foothold in Jerusalem is 
limited to the American colony and the work of the 
Missionary Alliance, under independent auspices, 
related to it. The Methodists have the beginnings 
of a fine plant given by the late Mrs. (Bishop) 
Newman, with an endowment, and accepted by the 
General Committee of Foreign Missions some four 
years ago. The building has been made habitable 
as a residence, and a summer assembly inaugurated. 
The underlying purpose of maintaining a school 
for post-graduate and missionary study meets a real 
need. The lot adjacent should be purchased, and 
when interested friends can be found to erect a suit- 
able auditorium and commons, it is certain to be- 
6 81 



IN PORTS AFAR 

come a student center of the greatest importance to 
the whole Church. The question of an auditorium, 
while not immediately pressing, is an urgent duty 
laid upon the denomination. The Methodists, who 
as tourists by the hundred visit the Holy City, 
ought to have a church properly fitted up for 
simple worship, and a pulpit available where Meth- 
odist ministers can preach Jesus and the Resurrec- 
tion in the locality of its origin. We appear to be 
the only ecclesia led by the providence of events into 
opportunity with its accompanying responsibility. 
The alternative is to perpetuate Protestant Chris- 
tianity in the city of David by the English, Scotch, 
and German State establishments, already well- 
housed and with formalities of long standing. If 
nonconformity has a mission anywhere, it is in 
Jerusalem, where spiritual freedom has been cor- 
rupted and repressed by hierarchies for three thou- 
sand years. Ecclesiastics are the harsh "realisms" 
of faith; the "romanticism" of our holy religion, 
with its love, laughter, and passion, should be some- 
what looked to. 

We turn from the Holy City, the loftiest out- 
look on the globe over spiritual history, with a 
new glow on our souls and a heightened under- 

82 



THE COUNTRY OF JESUS 

standing of what Christ means to the world of 
ideals and individuals. Christianity could not long 
keep Jerusalem for its capital. It is a world- 
religion: catholic, all-embracing, expansive. Pal- 
estine was too small, too remote from the tides of 
war, adventure, and trade, which must bear it to 
all lands. Christianity must be represented more 
and more as an affair of actual life, the result of 
man's reaction upon his environment, and of his 
own experiment in the things of the Spirit. It 
has its genesis in the lives of persons and communi- 
ties. It is the religious life of each person. There 
is no such thing as doctrinal Christianity ; as a vital 
force it exists only in the lives of individual Chris- 
tians. It is an attainment rather than a donation 
imposed upon man from without. We can exem- 
plify it in any country, but its dissemination is 
not by might and by power. That it enlarges year 
by year, century after century, is high proof of 
the dispensation of the Spirit under which we live. 



83 



Chapter V 

ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

T^7E returned to Port Said by the Kossier. 
^ ^ The embarkment at Jaffa was memorable, 
if peril of life by launching through a foaming 
surf 5 risk of limb by leaping at a flying stairway 
on the side of the ship, sea-sickness meanwhile, and 
triumph in success afterwards, can make it so. The 
ship was late in weighing anchor, and it was mid- 
forenoon of the next day before, for the third 
time, we greeted the statue of De Lesseps pointing 
to his world-transforming ditch. The traffic of 
Port Said is peculiar to itself. Ships of all nations 
come and go; some wait for passage through the 
canal, others coal; mail transfers go on; rows of 
Egyptian sailboats, with long lateen yards, dirty 
thwarts, high prows, and low sides, with rowboats 
shuttling back and forth, and half a dozen sullen 
battleships, among them the Hamediyeh, just es- 
caped from the Greeks, made the harbor an ani- 
mated scene. The town is nothing but a transfer 

84 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

station from shipboard to rail and from rail to 
ship ; the hotels, liquor saloons, houses of doubtful 
character are such as invariably gather about large 
transient terminals. We feel about Port Said as 
Christian did when he climbed back from the castle 
of Giant Despair into the pilgrim path again, 
"Into that place may we enter no more." The re- 
mainder of the day was spent ashore, and after 
dinner, with the first bundle of letters from home 
which we had received, we were rowed out to the 
Moldavia, just as the Smart Set from the ship 
were rowing in for a "hop" at one of the large 
hotels. 

The Moldavia is a typical P. & O. liner bound, 
when we boarded her, for Australia, carrying the 
mails, and with a full complement of passengers. 
Among them were Captain Harlow, U. S. N., and 
his wife ; the Aga Khan, distinguished head of the 
Indian Mohammedan organization, who enraged 
all Mussulman India by the sapient letter published 
in the India Times the day we landed in Bombay ; 
four members of the famous Leander Rowing 
"Eight," several English officers, the members of 
their families, and a swarm of young clerks going 
out to colonial offices. We were assigned to the 

85 



IN PORTS AFAR 

same table with four of these. They all partici- 
pated in the deck sports, and won prizes either there 
or at the promenade ball given the night before we 
reached Aden. They were probably twenty-five 
years old, and we watched their habits and became 
happily acquainted with them. They began the 
day with Scotch ; they had a second round on deck 
with other comrades in the steamer chairs about mid- 
forenoon; they had Scotch at the table prepara- 
tory to lunch, drank it instead of tea in the after- 
noon, and at night drank either champagne or 
port wine for dinner, and besides took a nightcap 
of Scotch at the bar before retiring. They had 
come all the way from London on the Moldavia, 
and the bill of one of them at Aden, which we 
saw presented, was between £11 and £12 sterling. 
He told me confidentially that he "was not feeling 
fit." Every one of them had been told that they 
could not live in India or the Straits Settlements 
without whisky, and that it was the sure preventive 
of all fevers and contagious diseases. We felt like 
telling them that they could not live and drink 
whisky the way they were doing on the Moldavia. 
The mortality among men of their class in India 
and China needs no other explanation. Like many 

86 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

hotels, the P. & O. steamers can not be run profit- 
ably without the "bar." 

The mails were aboard early and the ship 
steamed slowly along to keep the shore wash at a 
minimum. We sat on the upper deck and over- 
looked the sandy desolation. The railroad stations 
break the monotony on the right bank, and immense 
saltworks with great hills of salt, one looking as 
large as the old Hoosier slide at Michigan city, 
appear on the left. Huge sand-pumps for widen- 
ing the canal, and ships many pass us Europe- 
bound. A troop-ship, its decks crowded with men 
in khaki, bands playing and flags flying, raised a 
great cheer as our ship's orchestra played "Rule, 
Britannia." The men of many diff^erent south con- 
tinent colonies, the various occupations which they 
followed, the hopes they cherished, the opinions 
they uttered, and the eccentricities of nationality, 
individuals, and changing panorama of view made 
the conversation and debate of that first day on 
the Moldavia, while we passed through the canal, 
broadening and informing in the extreme. Fellow 
passengers in a ship soon become intimate. Meet- 
ing hour after hour in a small space, walking to- 
gether on deck, sitting at the same table, they pass 

87 



IN PORTS AFAR 

first into acquaintance, and then freely communi- 
cate their adventures and their purposes. 

The canal itself always started an Englishman, 
when talking with an American, on the respective 
merits of the Panama and Suez Canals. "How, 
in your opinion, will it affect shipping?" we were 
asked dozens of times; and would we arbitrate the 
coast-wise traffic tonnage exemptions? and would 
the Canadian railroads stand for it if we did not? 
were interrogations almost as certain to follow. The 
Australians were nowhere near so friendly and con- 
senting to everything the Englishmen said as we 
supposed they would be ; they had opinions of their 
own, and took particular pains to inform me that 
the ships which Australia and New Zealand were 
adding to the imperial navy were for home guard, 
and not for cruising abroad. They seemed to re- 
gard the cockney and the drinking-habits of the 
young clerks much as did we. 

By comparison with the Panama enterprise, the 
Suez Canal is a small affair. The excavations we 
passed through were all of soft miaterials and 
desert sand, capable of being removed by pumping 
or, at worst, by dredging, and when the French 
opened it they had actually taken out seventy-two 

88 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

million cubic yards of material, and piled it along- 
side the ditch. At Panama two hundred and twenty 
millions of cubic yards of excavation have been 
made, most of it, to loosen it, first blasted by dyna- 
mite, then loaded on to cars and hauled for miles 
either to the big dam or to distant dumps. The 
big dam at Panama has no parallel at Suez, and 
its terrific retaining walls to hold the waters of 
the Chagres River staggered the French capitalists 
and engineers. They turned it over to the Ameri- 
cans with the Culebra cut practically untouched. 
The late Colonel Gaillard, the engineer-commis- 
sioner who had charge of it, reported that five and 
one-half millions cubic yards had been removed 
before he took charge at Culebra, and that 
112,500,000 cubic yards have been removed there 
alone since. Twenty-four millions cubic yards have 
been added to the estimates by the board of inter- 
national engineers by the oozing of the sides lat- 
erally into the open cut at Culebra by reason of 
the enormous pressure of the weight above. A mil- 
lion cubic yards at Culebra means a solid block 
of stone three hundred feet long and as wide and 
as high. There were one hundred and eighteen such 
blocks. On the Panama hither side the excavation 

89 



IN PORTS AFAR 

began at Gold Hill, a point as high above the sea 
level as the Washington Monument rises above the 
Potomac, and on the other side it was only one hun- 
dred feet lower. The total excavation made at 
Panama would require a string of freight cars one 
hundred thousand miles long to hold its mass — 
long enough to reach four times round the earth. 
The Panama Canal was given up by the French, 
who began it, and is now completed; the English 
bought them out at Suez. Some genius for finish- 
ing things the mercurial Frenchman seems to lack, 
but his initial impulse is manifest. 

We proposed to our fellow travelers that by the 
purchase of the canal zone, and because of our 
treaty relations to the Republic of Panama, we 
were in no such relations to the Panama enterprise 
as the country was when the Hay-Pauncef ote treaty 
was negotiated. The clause in that treaty was 
copied verbatim from that guaranteeing the equal 
rights of all nations at Suez, which is hourly evaded 
by rebates to English shipping. No one seemed to 
think that we should hesitate to arbitrate on that 
account; even had we digged from New York to 
San Francisco, we should have still been obligated 
to give England the same rights to joint control 

90 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

that inhered in the original pact. The latter prop- 
osition seems to have equal validity with the former. 
The coast-wise traffic should pay the same freight 
rates as the ocean-going tonnage, but that is in no 
wise because of the treaty. Congress should notify 
our English cousins that since we own the canal- 
strip by purchase, we regard it as American terri- 
tory and send the retort courteous which we heard 
so often from Lord Salisbury concerning Vene- 
zuela, "There is nothing to arbitrate." England, 
Germany, and America ought to be hard and fast 
allies for world-peace and for settled governments 
in tropical countries, but this is not because of any 
example England has set us. A little frankness and 
a business-like arrangement of the tonnage rates 
will settle the whole question satisfactorily, unless 
Congress "stands pat," in which case only the 
Canadian railroads will have any cause for com- 
plaint. 

It grew warm rapidly after leaving Suez, where 
we were detained for several hours on a sandbar, 
which we struck through a slight deviation from 
the harbor course. We needed all kinds of clothing 
in the five days, the temperature ranging from the 
shivering cold of the Mediterranean mid-winter to 

91 



IN PORTS AFAR 

the penetrating sun of the tropics. It was a quick 
transition from overcoats and woolens to summer- 
wear. We stood khaki for two days, and then gave 
ourselves up to the luxury of duck. Several mis- 
sionaries seemed ready for the hot weather, but 
looked cold and needing heavier clothing until the 
Red Sea air warmed them up. They must have 
suffered dreadfully in Northern India, if they were 
bound thither. 

The loyal English subscribed over £63 to pro- 
vide prizes for deck sports and the fancy dress ball, 
which are regular features of every out-going jour- 
ney. Had it not been serious, it would have been 
laughable to observe the way those having the rec- 
reations in charge insisted on the Americans get- 
ting full share in the events and prizes. The first 
prize for the "most original costume improvised on 
ship" was finally assigned, after many countings, 
to Mrs. (Captain) Harlow, who at the last moment 
draped herself in an American flag, provided by 
the gallant captain of the Moldavia. She appeared 
with a big burly rigged up as John Bull. Happily 
the elect lady, who was also asked to present the 
prizes, did her part in most demure and engaging 
fashion, and insisted that a special prize should be 

92 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

given to the "second best," who had in such strange 
fashion come into competition with the "blood 
brotherhood" and "hands across the sea" necessi- 
ties of the occasion, as judged by the captain. It 
was the saving grace for the whole affair. The 
captain showed the gallant Englishman he was by 
singing, with a cornetist to fill in between the 
stanzas, and repeating to a volleying encore, the 
song, "Who carries the guns?" By the time he 
had named England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, 
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the crowd 
would have stood even for a sepoy. 

We had cricket nets rigged up on the deck each 
day to give those who wished to keep in practice 
full opportunity ; the game seemed very tame to us, 
and there is surely more excitement in one baseball 
game that goes twelve innings than in all the 
cricket played in England for a year. It was an 
incitement to comment to witness the cricketers quit 
when the afternoon bell for tea struck; a game 
that will allow tea to break in on it can never fully 
satisfy the American crowd. Then there is not 
sufficient nip and tuck in it; games to enthrall a 
crowd must run close enough to keep interest until 
the last inning has ended ; that is the quality that, 

93 



IN PORTS AFAR 

on analysis, seems to me most magnetizing to Amer- 
icans in the National game ; one can keep interested 
in a score that opens the last innings with one to 
tie and two to win ; given skill and headwork, they 
may pull the victory out even at the last; but 
cricket, while once in a year you might happen 
upon a "hair-raising" finish, is more likely to keep 
on like the brook, forever. A game that may be 
played with white flannels, and leave them immacu- 
late at the finish, will not satisfy democracy. 

But, while the game does not suit me, the way the 
English run the world does excite my admiration; 
at Aden it dawned upon my dull, lethargic thinking 
apparatus that Britain rules the sea not by excess 
of battleships, but by control of the coaling sta- 
tions in all the East. At some point west of Alex- 
andria and north of Malta you may coal ship under 
particular national auspices, but on the North 
African coast, within naval striking distance of 
Port Said, you may do it only by permission of 
His Britannic Majesty. You can sail or row, but 
to proceed under steam is by England's nod. 
There is nothing at Aden except a few ostrich 
feather peddlers, the British garrison, and coal. 
Kipling sang of Singapore: 

94 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

"Hail, mother! East and West must seek my aid 
Ere the spent gear may dare the ports afar; 
The second gateway of the wide world's trade 
Is mine to loose or bar." 

Since the American occupation of Manila that is not 
quite so true of Singapore, but at Port Said, Suez, 
Aden, Ceylon, Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, and, 
for that matter, at Hong Kong and Shanghai, while 
the commercial rivalry with Germany may proceed, 
England speaks the last word of command. It is 
this priceless control of the ways of trade and cam- 
paign, these stations with coal and battleships, that 
make all other naval powers second rate, no matter 
how many ships of war may float the opposing flag. 
That is why it is so difficult to candidly propose 
that the Germans should have their way in Syria. 
Beirut and Haifa would at once become a threat 
at the lines of communication. The United States 
has far more potentiality by a series of supporting 
naval bases than either Germany or France. We 
divide control of the Atlantic with England. San 
Francisco, Hawaii, Guam, and Luzon, with the 
coast harbors, except for Japan, give us practical 
command of the North Pacific ; the French lost their 
continuity of position in the Eastern world when 
they quit Egypt. 

95 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Had we sailed one week earlier or one week later, 
we should have gone direct to Bombay without 
change. As it was we bade good-bye to our Mol- 
davia friends at Aden and boarded the Salsette 
lying in the harbor with steam up waiting for us. 
She is a fine six-thousand-ton ship, wearing a broom 
forward and sporting a rooster at her peak. She 
makes the alternating week connection for the 
P. & O. at Aden for Bombay. She is trim as a 
private yacht, can run like the Isis, and keep it up 
for months; her officers are gentlemen, the table- 
service a continual besetment, and the nights we 
spent upon her were a wonder to our uninformed 
eyes. From her deck we first saw the Southern 
Cross hang glorious in the evening sky ; we watched 
the phosphorescence gleam along the ship's sides, 
and the flying fish go skimming over the water; 
Indians, thin, barefooted, looking ill-nourished, 
wearing only shirts and trousers, Aryan-faced, 
with deep-set eyes, stole cat-footed about the deck, 
and such a five days for pleasure and wonder we 
have never known. Of ships many that with stout 
planks or steel compartments have kept out the sea 
from us while we sailed, second only to the Siberia^ 
of the Pacific Mail, we reckon the Salsette, Though 

96 



ENGLAND ALL THE WAY 

we were eight hours late out of Aden, we reached 
Bombay on the hour and found that brave-hearted 
missionary, W. E. Bancroft, superintendent of the 
dialect work in Bombay and environs, founder of 
the new trade school, preacher, scholar, and man of 
affairs, at the dock with welcome to his home on 
the BycuUa Club road. 



97 



Chapter VI 
THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

WHEN one lands In India he must practically 
elect the section over which he will travel 
and what he will choose to see. More important 
than his itinerary are the auspices under which he 
does his sightseeing. He can stop at the hotels, 
contrast them conversationally with those he has 
frequented in Canada or Mexico, hear the opinions, 
wise or otherwise, which any accomplished and ver- 
satile globe trotter fresh from his morning's "nip" 
at the bar can furnish about missions; buy some 
trinkets on the hotel veranda and, with the guide 
belonging to the same environment, drive in a car- 
riage about the parks and gardens. That Is the 
plan of the majority of tourists who travel by the 
P. & O. and North German Lloyd, and represents 
the travel knowledge of the Cleveland passengers. 
Of the Salsette tourists fully two-thirds went, on 
landing at Bombay, to a hotel munificently adver- 
tised, whose proprietor and house physician were in 

98 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

court on having conspired to conceal four cases of 
cholera, contrary to the laws made and provided; 
and while we were yet in Bombay they were found 
guilty and a fine of £200 was assessed against them. 
It is all but certain that the tourists never heard 
of it and will dispute the accuracy of this state- 
ment, as one of our friends, whom we met eight 
hundred miles inland, felt called upon to do. He 
was squelched with a clipping from the daily pa- 
pers. Then there is the plan of keeping aloof 
from the hotels, living with the missionaries, going 
about under their direction, advising with them 
about objects of human interest, learning from 
them the people who are worth seeing, hiring your 
own conveyances, chaffering in the bazaars over 
your small purchases, figuring out the time of your 
own trains, and penetrating as much as you can 
into the life of the great, jostling millions who, in- 
scrutable, hopeless, and fascinating, go forward to 
their judgment day and doubtless to ours. The 
papers are full of advertisements and give complete 
accounts of the debates in the House of Commons ; 
but we bought them galore at four annas each 
(over eight cents), trying to find out who consti- 
tuted the new Cabinet who were to sit with Presi- 

99 



IN PORTS AFAR 

dent Wilson and divide the executive responsibili- 
ties of the new Administration, but save that Mr. 
Bryan was Secretary of State, we sought and looked 
in vain. In Palestine it is mountains, flowers, sky- 
line, and the high thoughts which should come in 
high places that attract, but India is of breathless 
interest because of the customs, barbarities, caste, 
religion, and economic conditions of the crowds 
that swarm like rabbits in a warren. The hotel at- 
mosphere is as remote from the real India as are 
the antipodes. The great Cook may well be pat- 
ronized by people who take their holiday by travel 
instead of at a summer or winter resort, and who 
are temperamentally fitted for it, and everywhere 
railway and steamship tickets may well be pur- 
chased of Cook. But men who wish to put them- 
selves into the crucible of another civilization, that 
a precipitate of charity, energy, and service may 
result; who wish to enlarge themselves beyond the 
native mold and environment in which they were 
cast, will find the conduct of tourist agencies and 
the services of hotel guides practically valueless. 
India, of all countries, is the most difficult to 

fathom; ,,^ ^ . ^ ^ 

"For east is east, and west is west, 

And never the twain shall meet," 
100 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

has an underlying modicum of fact that makes the 
lines the words of a seer, ajid not merely a quotable 
sentiment. We had hotel experience at Ahmende- 
bad, Jaipur, Agra, and Benares, and for the rest 
dwelt among "mine own people." 

There are many beaten paths about India ; there 
is one taken always by merchants and men in a 
hurry, through Jubbulpore, and by the mail route 
between Bombay and Calcutta. We followed the 
great circle, via Jaipur, Delhi, and all that revel 
of names that we have heard at Methodist Con- 
ferences from time immemorial, making a detour 
from Allahabad south so as to attend the Central 
Provinces Conference session at Jubbulpore, and 
then back again for Benares and on to Calcutta, 
from which, as a point of departure, we visited Dar- 
jeeling for the view of the Himalayas. We had 
five weeks for India. We had planned for less, and 
only an important Government engagement kept 
us from doubling the length of the visit. Only 
those who have lived in India will know how short 
those weeks were, and the heart-sorrow when, at 
Calcutta, David Lee, a name imperishable in the 
missionary annals of India, at once apostle and 
prophet, saint and servant, waved us aboard the 

101 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Ellenga. It is the land of heroism ; China, too, is 
full of heroes, but the heroisms of China are part 
of a swift, seething movement forward, with the 
workers knowing that the day is breaking and that 
deliverance is at hand. But in India the heroes 
have part in a flux of things that go no whither, 
and where events are not discernibly better. Even 
the glacier movement in the Swiss mountains may 
be discerned, and here and there on some great 
peak the break and scar of some fissure indicates 
that, however slowly, the glacier has already begun 
to move down the valley toward the river and the 
sea. There is no discernible fissure scar in India. 
It must be better, but it is only as the eleventh cen- 
tury was better than the tenth century in the medi- 
aeval darkness, because it was a century farther on. 
We can not name all the heroes we met, nor de- 
lineate their heroisms. The categories of space 
and time, not those of yearning and love, keep me 
silent. Their faces and voices, their homes and 
their high emprise rank them in abiding memory 
on that battlefield of unselfish fame. 

We have already named Mr. Bancroft. He ac- 
companied us on the excursion to the caves of 
Elephanta, where we learned the indescribable in- 

102 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

decency of Hindoo temples and worship at first 
hand; showed us the Bombay market at sunrise, 
followed with me a Parsee procession to the 
"Towers of Silence," arranged a brief visit to Wil- 
son College, and to the industrial school he has 
established for the maintenance of his high-caste 
converts; five services we attended together on the 
Sunday spent in his diocese. He acted as my in- 
terpreter at the Gujarat service, found one of his 
native helpers to do likewise for the Mahratti, and 
on his porch we baptized three young men, whose 
story reads like a chapter out of some book of mar- 
tyrs. The man would be unique in any Conference. 
He believes that native persistence in the Christian 
life requires an utter break with heathenism and 
the support of the converts on a new economic basis. 
He has capitalized out of his small salary an indus- 
trial school, for all practical plans a factory, for 
making mission furniture. Ten men, friends of 
missions, or at least friends of opportunity, ought 
to give him $100 each, so that he could purchase 
a gas engine, saws, planer, sticker, and help to 
perfect a little plant that would give employment 
to fifty men in the interim of losing their old 
livelihood and readjusting themselves to Christian 

103 



IN PORTS AFAR 

fellowship. When that is done, a steel trunk ad- 
dition, then a printery, and other industries, of 
the highest educational value, and self-supporting 
from the very beginning, will follow. 

Miss Abbott is the first of the great sisterhood, 
called the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 
we met in India, but inseparably associated with 
her are Mrs. F. M. Wilson, Miss Lawson, Miss 
Poole, and Mrs. Alma Hearne Holland, the gifts 
of Iowa Wesleyan College to the mission enter- 
prises of the Church. Miss Abbott had shown our 
daughter, now a missionary's wife, through some 
zenanas a year prior to our visit. She repeated 
the courtesy to Mrs. Schell, who compressed the 
observations of the India tour into the terse truism 
that "heathenism, however named, is one vast or- 
ganized crime against womanhood and childhood." 
It has been our privilege to attend the national 
gathering of the P. E. O. held in our own college 
chapel, and lead a pilgrimage to the very rooms 
where it was initiated; seven hundred queenly 
women, teachers, editors, soloists, home-makers, 
business-trained, heart-trained, handsomely gowned, 
made up the audience. We have known the East- 
em Star in communities where that order repre- 

104 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA — I 

sented the best and bravqst women are, and attempt 
for the age that is to be; our daughters have 
brought into our home knowledge of what the 
Greek sororities cherish as ideals, and their attempts 
to approximate it in heart and home; and without 
wish to disparage or minify any of these or other 
sisterhoods, in our judgment the women of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society take the 
palm. They have gone out from homes of the 
tenderest and most devoted culture, college-trained, 
and with a devotion and sympathy that only women 
could show have set themselves at the task of re- 
generating the women of all lands and obtaining 
for their despised sisters of Oriental countries the 
commonest protection and decency afforded for 
women in America ; following the example of Mary 
of Bethany, who broke the alabaster box of oint- 
ment very precious at the feet of Christ, they have 
brought the skill of Western surgery, the teaching 
faculty of Occidental countries, and the deep spir- 
itual insight of their consuming devotion, and with 
every charm and all the winsomeness of engaging 
womanhood have put these talents at the service of 
their poor, sinned-against and sinning sisters of 
India. 

105 



IN PORTS AFAR 

All our mission properties in Bombay are bur- 
dened with debt. There would be no profit in lo- 
cating the responsibility if it were possible so to do. 
The wish to get into dialect work, the dependence 
which missionary committees at home must place 
on the estimates for old and new work, made often 
by inexperienced men, and the changing personnel 
of the men on the committees to whom the budgets 
are referred in New York, have brought about in 
Bombay, as elsewhere, an acute situation. Face to 
face with the terrible heathenism of that city our 
immediate appropriations are exhausted in paying 
interest and reducing the indebtedness. The prop- 
erties the Church occupies are well chosen and ad- 
mirably adapted to their purpose, but interest on 
the debts has accumulated to the point that makes 
ownership at Bombay — 

"Between the palm and the sea, 
Where the world-end steamers wait," — 

in our judgment a question of name, and not of 
fact. Three- fourths of all tourists begin their trip 
across India at Bombay, and a large part of the 
criticism of our missionary enterprises must grow 
out of a situation that confronts them there, for 

106 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

which no one on the field is responsible and inherited 
from good knights whose swords are already rust. 
There is no fair appropriation for native workers 
on any district in India, and the actual work of 
the district superintendents is at such long range 
to secure funds to pay the native helpers, without 
whom no permjanent progress is possible. 

The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society has 
an unexampled opportunity to open a college for 
women in Bombay. Good administration requires 
that the Parent Board confine itself to work 
already undertaken, but this new college would 
serve the hundreds of Parsee young women, and 
seems like the beckoning hand of Providence. The 
women only can do it ; it is to them the invitation 
calls. Given housing and equipment, like Mr. 
Bancroft's industrial school, it would be more than 
self-supporting from the very first, would render 
imperial service to all India, be a permanent con- 
tribution to the good of the municipality, and mak- 
ing as it should the impression produced by a visit 
to the Isabella Thoburn College at Lucknow, or 
to Miss Lawson's school at Cawnpore, would radi- 
cally change the earliest thought tourists get of 
missionary work in India. 

107 



IN PORTS AFAR 

From Bombay to Baroda is a short night's ride. 
That is the sphere of influence assigned to Dr. 
Linzell, whose good work on the missionary com- 
mittee in the last General Conference will long 
abide. The theological school, the Nicholson Me- 
morial, the schools and hospital of the Woman's 
Foreign Misisonary Society, are located in the can- 
tonment, the mile square, where the English camp 
is quartered. Through an interpreter we spoke to 
the theologues. The attendance is less than at 
Bareilly. One could not fail to grow thoughtful 
in these training schools where the future ministry 
of India is now on the potter's wheel. The courses 
are simple, and yet produce prodigious enlarge- 
ment to the minds of the young men and their 
wives; for all, as now occurs to me, were married. 
They are making the men who shall make India. 
We found ourselves wishing that a few simple 
courses in chemistry, physics, and biology might 
be arranged. Christianity all over the East means 
the English language, Western science, and the 
practice of equality. Baroda and Bareilly mean 
to India what Roberts College has meant to the 
Balkan States, and are precursors of the same in- 
fluence which the Anglo-Chinese schools at Penang 

108 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

and Singapore are to-day exercising on the Repub- 
lic of China. 

We saw the Gaekwar's palace, with the solid gold 
cannon at its entrance, the tomb in the streets, 
which to move would raise a rebellion, scared the 
monkeys in the gardens, greeted the missionaries 
in Dr. LinzelPs home, visited the hospital, and saw 
the Gaekwar riding with an escort. He is the most 
progressive of all the native princes, and the only 
one that is an actual ruler with administrative 
influence and competency. The single proof of his 
efficiency, needed to satisfy the Western world, is 
that many of his subjects go to the English can- 
tonment and are permitted to marry there under 
circumstances that would prohibit the union in the 
Gaekwar's territory. The Baroda mission is a fine 
example of the influence missionaries exert in for- 
eign lands upon those who occupy the "seats of the 
mighty." The Gaekwar, though officially follow- 
ing the Hindoo cult, has the Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary physician for the women of his family, and 
applied to Dr. Linzell for a list of specifications in 
attainment and rank required of those who shall 
be permitted to follow the office of "religious 
teacher." The mendicant "fakirs" have aroused 

109 



IN PORTS AFAR 

his princely wrath, and seem to him evidently to 
require some better economic basis than preying 
upon the superstitious natures of his people, if they 
are to continue in their calling. 

We missed the trade school at Nardiad, an illus- 
tration and forerunner of a hundred like it yet to 
be established. It is a type of the best avenue of 
missionary propaganda, except school and hospital, 
yet followed. Ahmendebad is architecturally al- 
most as interesting as wider-famed Delhi and Agra. 
Jaipur is sui generis. Maharajah is the title of 
its nominal ruler. He is one of the potentates who 
survive in name, but have no vital place in the con- 
duct of affairs. There is a difference in the titles 
of rajah, maharajah, begum, nawab, gaekwar, 
king, emperor, and Lord This and Lord That, but 
to delimit exactly the frontier of their original and 
imported meanings, except at Baroda, is a work 
of supererogation. The Gaekwar rules in Baroda, 
except in the cantonment ; everywhere else the Eng- 
lish resident is the government de facto. So much 
for the Maharajah of Jaipur, who has two palaces 
within the walls of the city and a third at Amber. 
Admission to the palaces can be obtained only by 
a permit issued by Colonel Bailey, the resident. He 

110 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

has made a requirement that tourists shall apply 
for admission after they reach Jaipur, a rule 
founded on courtesy and good form. The day is 
really necessary to make arrangements for their 
reception at the city palace and provide elephants 
to transport the party to Amber, a distance of five 
miles beyond the walls, and its approach not per- 
missible save by bullock cart or elephant. A party 
of eight English gentlemen and their wives had to 
stay for the second day, but my card and a brief 
explanation to the colonel's aide of my Government 
errand to the Philippines brought us, in addition to 
a personal interview with the resident, the coveted 
cards. We had a pleasant sojourn in the palace, 
to which public admission is given in the city 
proper, saw the tigers in the cages which adjoin 
the business section, and heard them roar, which 
a tip to the attendant will occasion; did all kinds 
of shopping, and have regretted ever since that we 
did not buy more of the gewgaws for sale there 
rather than less. To this was added the ride to 
Amber, where we wandered from room to room, no- 
ticing the gorgeous fittings with which the ancient 
kingly state was set about, and the pains taken by 
baths, gardens, jewels, and finery to reconcile the 

111 



IN PORTS AFAR ' 

queen favorite to her loneliness and solitude. The 
lofty elevation, naturally impregnable, on which 
the palace is built, the wildness approximating 
jungle on the very edge of which the palace stands, 
and where tigers still nightly issue forth, if the 
word of the guides may be believed, and the en- 
forced labor and skill necessary to build such a 
structure makes a forcible introduction to the Shah 
Jehan period of Indian civilization and govern- 
ment. 

Delhi, now the official residence of the viceroy, 
except during the heated term, when the capital is 
at Simla, would need a volume to describe. Frank 
M. Wilson, superintendent of the Delhi District, 
one of the great missionaries of modern times, met 
us at the depot. On his advice we discarded, as a 
means of conveyance, camels which we had ridden 
to the pyramids, the donkeys which had conveyed 
us about Jerusalem, and the elephant for the ride 
to Amber, and embarked upon a Pierce- Arrow ; we 
were whisked about the fort walls, tombs, and pal- 
aces, jSnishing our outward-bound ride at the Kutab 
Minar, and returning by the old observatory, 
speaking to this generation the scientific attain- 
ments of the Mohammedan invaders. We saw 

112 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

where stood the peacock throne, read the tablets at 
the gate which commemorates the valor of those 
who perished to breach it in the wild days of the 
mutiny, were shown the window from which the 
bomb attempting the life of the Viceroy was thrown, 
rode to the site of the Durbar, which celebrated 
the accession of George V, and to other memorials 
of valor and honor which the city contains. 

The Methodist work in Delhi is limited to the 
native dialect ; the Baptists have a strong following 
and an English congregation. The commission 
appointed to report the condition of the India Sun- 
day schools to the International Convention at 
Zurich were in Dellii the Sunday we spent there, 
and after preaching through Brother Wilson as an 
interpreter, we were privileged to attend the long 
interview he gave a member of the commission on 
the "mass" movement in his district, and heard the 
sermon in the Baptist church in the quiet of the 
evening hour. 

But the real India is not to be found in Bombay, 
Delhi, Lucknow, or Calcutta, nor in anything they 
offer by way of sight or suggestion. There are 
six hundred and ninety-five thousand villages, av- 
eraging approximately five hundred people each, 
8 113 



IN PORTS AFAR 

that make up the real India. They are isolated, 
practically impenetrable, except where the govern- 
ment has built roads, and dak bungalows, essentially 
represent the villages of Palestine at the time of 
Christ, and remain the oldest illustration of what 
the world was at the dawnings of civilization. 
Century after century the dead level of their hun- 
ger, swinishness, bestiality, and caste has continued. 
You see occasional villages from the car windows, 
and to one of them at least every traveler who would 
wish to say that he has seen India must go. The 
Wilsons planned our excursion for us. They took 
their servants, dishes, bedding — ours also (for 
every traveler in India carries, as in Christ's day 
in Palestine, his bed) — and food; loaded us into a 
train, which pulled out of Delhi parallel to the 
great road over which Alexander and his invading 
phalanx marched three hundred years before the 
Cross was set up. We alighted at an unpronounce- 
able station, spelled Behadighar, where tongas 
were in readiness to carry us three and one-half 
miles down a macadam road built by the govern- 
ment to a dak bungalow, erected also by the Eng- 
lish to accommodate the army officers and the 
health and civil service employees, whose duties may 

114 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

call them to the district. Without these roads and 
bungalows any supervision of the villages would 
be impossible. It is scant enough with them, and 
yet is the beginning of law and authority. The 
bungalows are divided into kitchen, sitting and 
sleeping rooms which are fitted up with cots, and 
a charge of sixteen cents per person is made, but 
they are free to missionaries if not occupied at their 
coming. 

Then for another four miles we rode on an ekka, 
and then off the main road for three-fourths of a 
mile to the village of Tikri, where for two years 
a company of faithful souls of the "sweeper caste," 
knowing the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Command- 
ments, and the Twenty-third Psalm, had yearned, 
hoped, and waited for baptism. They came run- 
ning together at our approach. Brother Wilson 
preached, exhorted, interrogated; Mrs. Wilson 
sang, talked to the women, taught the children the 
Commandments, and examined the necks and 
breasts of the poor, wild things for charms against 
evil spirits which they are prone to cling to, and a 
few demurred at surrendering. We have in our 
keepsakes several of these poverty-stricken memen- 
tos of that day. Then Brother Wilson went into 

115 



IN PORTS AFAR 

every little mud hovel they call a house, to be cer- 
tain that no shrines were still kept; and then a 
long interview was held with the chaudrais (the 
slight semblance of governing that the mahuUah, 
or ward, affords) concerning a big shrine standing 
nearby in the street. Certain high-caste men cer- 
tified that it belonged to the whole village and could 
not be torn down. Meanwhile the day waned, and 
then, after more preaching and prayers, and re- 
newed questioning as to the spiritual meaning of 
baptism, by families they knelt down and received 
the ordinances. The chaudrais cut off every chutia, 
the long lock which several of the men had retained 
as the lingering heathenish practice; the men 
seemed to me to knit into courage and capacity by 
the rite; the women trembled at our hands. Once, 
after a great ingathering, we baptized sixty-four 
on a single Sabbath morning ; at Tikri seventy-two 
witnessed in the Spirit we trust by water. Some few 
were Chemars, a caste slightly higher than the 
sweepers, and probably another fifty were in the 
fields, and yet lament their enforced absence on 
that memorable day. A throng of high-caste men 
stood about wondering, doubtless, what the strange 
occasion foreshadowed to those baptized, to the 

116 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

village, and to themselves and their ancient privi- 
leges — nothing, probably, they decided, as pride 
and privilege are everywhere dull to the portents 
of coming change. A collection followed — some 
poor, shriveled, brass coins; some eggs, a diminu- 
tive chicken, about the size of a good, plump quail ; 
in total perhaps two rupees. Then, as night drew on 
apace, a crowd of children and youth accompanied 
us to the high road, bade us good-bye, and our last 
memory is of their sweet salaams and the chorus of 
the hymns which followed us down the pike like the 
voice of waters, and which rise now in our souls 
when an organ swells and a choir sings. The chil- 
dren looked out of their eyes as though they were 
from the Mt. Pleasant schools and homes. It was 
pitch-dark and pouring rain before we reached the 
bungalow, and on account of rain we could not go 
the next day to two other villages. The Viceroy of 
India, Lord Hardinge, whom we saw alight from 
his official train on our return to Delhi, on his first 
public appearance after the dreadful attempt upon 
his life, and the sepoys, who in feathers and regi- 
mental panoply guarded his progress, looked com- 
monplace by comparison with the eager faces of the 
Tikri children and youth. 

117 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Bishop Warne, equal of any man since apostolic 
times in labors and consecration, whose guests we 
were at Lucknow, told me in the gathering twilight, 
seated in his own home, of going to a like village; 
they yearned for baptism; five villagers had pre- 
viously, because of baptism, been denied water from 
the public well and had died of thirst. The bishop 
and district superintendent canvassed the situation 
and decided that it was better for the villagers not 
to baptize them. The decision caused great sorrow 
and disappointment. Then, with tears running 
down his face, the bishop told me how eight of them 
followed him down the road twelve miles, waiting 
while he slept, and appeared at early morning at 
the depot as he was leaving the district, and again 
asked him that he would seal their faith and com- 
mission them even for death by baptism. What 
would you do.^ There are ten thousand on the 
Delhi District alone waiting now these two years. 
The fact of baptism works like iron in their blood, 
and they deem it consent to their equality with the 
strange sahibs who come from beyond the wall at 
the end of the world. It helps them in industry, 
gives them hope, and is like some great charter, 
some declaration of independence to the individuals, 

118 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— I 

the caste, and the village. The missionary commit- 
tee ought to add ten thousand dollars each to the 
appropriations of the North and Northwest India 
Conferences this year, and thus call upon the 
Church to meet this wild surge toward Christianity. 



119 



Chapter VII 

THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

r I iHE fort on the banks of the Jumna, with the 
-*• marble mosque and the Taj Mahal, took us to 
Agra, Morning, noon, and at sunset we viewed 
the shapely, graceful structure of the Taj Mahal, 
approached by curving roads, of delicate beauty, 
mirrored in the limpid lake constructed to reflect it, 
and inferior, in the opinion of impartial judges, 
only to the Parthenon. The guide-books will tell 
you all about it, and inform you of the wonderful 
lamp with which Lord Curzon, the titled husband 
of an American woman, enriched the interior dig- 
nity. The final imprisonment of Shah Jehan by 
his son excites us to Latin, ^'Sic gloria transit.^' 
We took a guide at the Cawnpore depot, which we 
reached at an early hour, for a drive to Wheeler's 
Intrenchment, the Massacre Ghat, and the Memo- 
rial Well. This latter is worth any discomfort of 
travel by sea or land to look upon; not for the 
heavenly-carved angel, nor for the sublime scroll 

120 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

bearing the words, "These are they who came out 
of great tribulation," nor the surrounding park, 
all the gift of Victoria Regina, but for that mo- 
ment at the entrance. We rode up and climbed 
out of the carriage to be saluted at the moment 
by an English soldier, plume in his cap, red coat, 
and white gloves. The guide says, sotto voce, "Na- 
tive guides are not permitted to enter the gardens," 
and directed us to the Memorial. Again the soldier 
saluted, and resumed his guard. That is the superb 
punishment good old England has visited upon the 
native peoples of India for now fifty-seven years, 
and is likely to continue for a century longer. It is 
a continual reproach for their broken faith. They 
promised safe conduct for six hundred and fifty- 
three women and children from the intrenchment to 
Allahabad. With the indescribable deviltry and 
treachery of heathenism, they escorted them to the 
ghat at the bank of the river, where they were to 
embark, and after some were aboard, shot them all 
down. Only one escaped. For this act of treach- 
ery against women and children, exclusion from the 
gardens and the memorial have been enforced upon 
the Indians ever since the mutiny. Once an order 
in council permitted the North India Conference, 

121 



IN PORTS AFAR 

many members of which are natives, to visit the 
memorial in a body, and around that white marble- 
rimmed sepulcher they knelt, while one of the mem- 
bers, who as a boy had seen the terrible slaughter, 
led in prayer. We asked the native guide for the 
Methodist mission, and were told that it was five 
miles away. With the engagements ahead we had 
not time for such a drive, but we were then only 
a few short blocks from Miss Lawson's school, the 
object of our quest. Had we known the wise ways 
of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, or 
been in the company of an English guide, we 
should not have missed it. One of the sisterhood 
had just died of smallpox, and sympathy required 
the call. Miss Lawson, second of all that wonder- 
ful organization, went to India to begin women's 
work for women ; what Jane Addams is to Chicago, 
Anna Lawson is to Cawnpore. The hundred things 
we saw that we did not plan to see, do not make 
up for this which for months we had planned, and 
through reliance on a native guide missed. Happy 
the school that takes its name from so radiant a 
personality, and woe to us so steeped in denomina- 
tional colloquialisms as to lose sight of the one by 
practice of the other. 

122 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

There are two occasions of a journey to Luck- 
now; one is the bishop, who took us to his home, 
opened for hours God's way with him in that far 
land, and speeded us on our way with rejoicing. 
The other is B. T. Badley, secretary of the Ep- 
worth League for India, born and reared adjacent 
to his present residence, inheriting a name honored 
in mission annals, educated in America, with the 
English pride of race and achievement, and incar- 
nating in himself the youth of the world he repre- 
sents. The bishop and the secretary took us to 
Reid Christian College and showed us over the 
residency, scene of the greatest heroism the great 
annals of great England show. In boyhood we 
had read the authoritative book on the mutiny, and 
the secretary's library yielded the precious volume. 
Like a new tale of old adventure the story came 
back : the land denuded of Englishmen ; the changes 
in provincial administration, especially in Oudh; 
the conspiracy of degenerate princes ; the misplaced 
faith of the English officers in the sepoys, taken 
unawares at church; the unfathomable hatred of 
the Mussulmen ; the march of the regiments in full 
uniform toward Cawnpore under that burning sky ; 
the wild trumpetings of the elephants ; the disorder 

123 



IN PORTS AFAR 

they caused in the artillery; the escape from the 
flank movement; the hurried retreat; the energy 
and efficiency with which almost In a day Lawrence 
transformed that big front dooryard into an im- 
pregnable fortress; the lone three thousand sur- 
rounded there by fifty thousand sepoys with Eng- 
lish rifles, having been taught their use by English 
drill sergeants, and another hundred thousand sym- 
pathetic natives armed with hate and the spur of 
plunder to feed, spy for, and encourage them, — all 
these and fifty other details crowded down the cor- 
ridors of memory. 

And now, in company with the bishop and the 
secretary, we visited the actual scene ; saw for our- 
selves where the sandbags were piled, the artillery 
stationed, where the assaults were made; went into 
the old church from which finally retreat was made, 
and down into tlie cellars where the women and 
children were huddled, swarmed upon by flies, 
dying of typhoid; and where Jenny, the Scotch 
maid, cried out, "Oh! dinna ye hear the slogan 
far awa^f^" Then, after two hours, we went to 
the cemetery, where since King George's coronation 
they put flo>vers every day on the tomb of Law- 
rence, and read on the simple slab: 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

"Here lies 

Henry Lawrence, 

Who tried to do his duty. 

May God have mercy on his soul!" 

In Westminster Abbey, along with England's 
great sons, by reason of birth or favoritism, many 
mediocrities have obtained sepulture, but in the 
"acre" of the residency only heroes sleep. Every 
name is immortal, and it is no wonder that from 
many lands they bring back for burial with com- 
rades those who kept the banner of England float- 
ing there. Those hours were sacramental, and long 
into the night, when bishop and secretary were 
asleep, we read the book, rejoiced that such as 
they were at the helm in that dark land, and felt 
the glory in our souls that of that noble three thou- 
sand, nine hundred and ninety-two came through. 
It helps to "Assert eternal Providence, and justify 
the ways of God with men." 

The Isabella Thoburn College for women and 
the Lucknow College for men illustrate the final 
reliance that Christianity must put upon the slow 
processes of education and the enlargement of mind 
and spirit. Two of Bishop Robinson's daughters 

125 



IN PORTS AFAR 

have large responsibilities at Thoburn College, and 
that institution is worth a chapter in the expanding 
roll of faith begun in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
After breakfast with the women we spoke in chapel 
on the superiority of Christianity to Mohammed- 
anism, with a dozen young women of Islamic birth 
listening attentively. Most of them have already 
discarded the veil, and study, dine, and recite with 
the regular classes. Like the leaping fires from the 
scaur of Lemnos to the watching roof in Ithaca 
to indicate that Troy had fallen, those two schools 
in Lucknow flash the story of coming dawn on the 
Hindoo hills. 

From Lucknow, through Allahabad, junction of 
the Jumna and Ganges, with time only for a brief 
survey of that important center, we rushed for 
Jubbulpore, so as to attend the Conference of the 
Central Provinces, in session there under the presi- 
dency of Bishop John W. Robinson. It had for 
us all the strange attraction of my first Conference, 
when Bishop Harris presided. Dr. Fowler spoke for 
missions, and preached in the opera house on Sun- 
day afternoon; when Hartzell, of the Freedmen's 
Aid ; William Taylor, Bishop of Africa to be, and 
McCabe, of the Church Extension Society, stirred 

126 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

my slow pulses by their eloquence and fervor. At 
Jubbulpore five graduates of Iowa Wesleyan are 
at work. The Abbotts, husband and wife ; Brother 
Hermann, treasurer of the mission and head of the 
theological school; Mrs. Holland, Miss Poole, all 
cherish the blessed alma mater; and, gathered at 
one table, we sang the songs, gave the cheers, and 
once the bishop, who is from Iowa, joined us in 
the "yell." We lectured, preached the Conference 
sermon, led the devotions, spoke to the theological 
students, and had the honor (for so it is counted) 
of going to the barracks and addressing the sol- 
diers quartered there. We were guests at Mrs. 
Hearne's "Yellow House," where all the Conference 
breakfasted, lunched, and dined together; called 
at the home of the Abbotts and Hermanns, and at 
Miss Poole's invitation rode in a bullock cart to 
the Madan Mahal, some three miles from the Yel- 
low House. We started at 7.15 o'clock in the fore- 
noon, and reached the Woman's Foreign Mission- 
ary Society school in time for breakfast at 12.30 
P. M. Time, five hours ; distance, six miles. But 
the rate was less than might be calculated, as the 
last half mile was covered on foot, and Mrs. Schell 
and Miss Poole spoke to a Brahmin vowed to silence, 

127 



IN PORTS AFAR 

who displayed himself in a red gown, and thus 
errors of speculation are imported into the mathe- 
matics of the journey. The invitation, the genial 
company, and the wide view were probably inr 
separable from the means of conveyance. But, 
then, it Is good to learn how the tide of life plodded 
forward In "our grandfathers' days." Wherever 
the graduates of a college gather and speak lov- 
ingly of its Faculty, Its history and hope, there is 
the college. So Iowa Wesleyan belongs to India. 
It recruits the membership of many Conferences 
at home, and at the same time gives two strong 
men and six remarkable women to the India for- 
eign field. Sons and daughters such as they for- 
ever praise her in the gates, and more than justify 
every dollar given to the equipment and endowment 
of the institution. 

The "mail" on all the India railroads Is a fast 
train, making almost double the speed of the "ex- 
press" and carrying only first and second class 
passengers. Baggage on the Indian railways must 
be checked at the depots from which the tickets 
are purchased. It happened that at Bombay, hav- 
ing bought our ticket from one station, and finding 
it more convenient to leave from another, the bag- 

128 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

gageman would not check our trunks, and so 
trunks, bedding-roll, handbags, and suit-cases were 
taken into the compartments all over India. 
Steamer trunks such as ours were all shoved under 
the seat, upon which you make up your bed for the 
night's ride. We had a compartment to ourselves 
on the "mail" from Jubbulpore to Moghal Serai, 
the main line station for Benares. We were early 
at the bathing ghats. It was a feast day, which 
brought out an unusual crowd, and various person- 
ages estimated that two hundred and fifty thousand 
people bathed in the Ganges that morning. Some 
of the most dreadfully indecent temples in India 
are adjacent to the Ganges at Benares, and on that 
morning they were crowded. A heap of bodies 
to be burned later that morning recall Edwin Ar- 
nold's lines: 

"For all the tears of all the eyes 

Have room in Gunga's bed, 
And all the sorrow is gone to-morrow, 
When the white flames have fed:" 

the thousands wading into the water, scooping it 
in their hands and swallowing the filthy stuff ; other 
thousands polishing their brass water-jars, mean- 
while occasional carcasses of dead animals, festering 
9 129 



IN PORTS AFAR 

and bloated, drifting down the river, and the hun- 
dreds of boats, with upper decks for sightseers, 
made such a scene as is not obtainable anywhere 
else on the planet, and which few would care to see 
again. The Monkey Temple is as despicable, 
filthy, and vile as the Kalighat at Calcutta, though 
both white and black goats are offered at Benares. 
It was after such a day as this that Bishop Mc- 
Dowell is reported to have said to Mrs. McDowell, 
president of the Woman's Foreign Missionary So- 
ciety: "After this we shall never have another 
happy day." The indecencies of the temples, the 
open loathesomeness of heathenism, and the igno- 
rance, superstition, and fanaticism of the surging 
throngs gave me a depression from which it took 
me weeks to recover. Benares ought to be labeled 
like the gates of Dante's "Inferno," 

"AU hope abandon, ye, who enter here." 

After the tour of Benares, the human body we saw 
drifting with the tide in the river at Calcutta, 
shoved off from some burning ghat in the absence 
of the mourners, so as to save the fuel for its in- 
cineration, was rather less shocking. 

The "mail" whisked us from Benares to Calcutta 

130 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

in fifteen hours. A high-caste Hindoo shared the 
compartment with us for some hours. He had 
been educated at Cambridge, spoke excellent Eng- 
lish, and was as much interested in America as we 
were in India. We discoursed together about Be- 
nares, and he expressed great interest in the at- 
tempts of the Brahm-Somaj to reform Hindooism. 
As in our conversation we tended toward mutual 
frankness we put to him the statement of the 
hadji that Western science had put the war ma- 
terials into the hands of the Christian powers. Evi- 
dently he had often discussed the proposition be- 
fore, for he quietly replied that it was "not the mili- 
tary power of the Occident that was to be feared, 
but the efficiency of the Western syllogism." The 
Hindoo is addicted to what he labels "absolute 
thought," and bases his syllogism on some affirma- 
tion having general acceptance, or on some specu- 
lation credited to a "deity" or "divinity." The 
Occidentalist long examines his basic statement by 
observation before he risks an induction from it. 
This is what the Hindoo meant by his phrase, the 
"efficiency of syllogism." This habit of mind is 
the only corrective for superstition abroad or at 
home, and our faith, whether hay, wood, stubble, 

131 



IN PORTS AFAR 

or gold, is tried as by its fire, and the days shall 
declare of what sort it is. If universal experience 
could be accumulated and tabulated, it would settle 
the matter; but we lack the proper powers to so 
accumulate and tabulate. So long as Dalton, be- 
cause he is color-blind, declares there are only two 
primary colors in the spectrum, all he is able to 
see, and Sir William Herschel says there are three, 
because he can see them, third parties interrogate 
our powers of observation. At any rate it is cer- 
tain we exercise these powers, if we possess them, 
under limitations that make them practically value- 
less, and we must remain hesitant about the basis 
of our syllogism, which it most concerns us to know. 
But it is not quite so serious as it appears, for it 
is heart, and not thought, that furnishes the dy- 
namics of life. 

It seemed like the coming of some longed-for 
Sabbath to a weary laborer to reach the Lee Me- 
morial Home, Wellington Square, Calcutta; great 
it was to meet David Lee, beloved in the gospel! 
to sit at their board, kneel with them in their 
family devotions, and ride about with them, to find 
the spot of the Black Hole tragedy, and in their 
company to see the Heber Memorial, the frown- 

132 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

ing fortifications, the botanical gardens, with its 
rare orchids and famous banyan tree, and watch 
the gyrations of the drum major in the Black 
Watch regiment band, as they gave concerts in the 
esplanade. One boy was left to them, a baby in 
his mother's arms at the time of the Darjeeling dis- 
aster, which in an hour left the Lees desolate and 
enriched that heathen city with the Lee Memorial 
Home. Another son has since come to heal their 
loneliness. On our part we renewed a fellowship 
exceedingly precious, which time can not sunder. 
We pressed northward so as to spend the Sab- 
bath in Darjeeling. In the manse of the Union 
Church, Rev. Joseph Culshaw, editor of the India 
Witness, greeted us, took us to the government 
house, introduced us to the civil dignitaries already 
arriving to spend the hot months in that famous 
mountain resort, pointed out the path of that cloud- 
burst that carried the Lee family away, and in the 
school with Miss Knowles and in the church on 
Sunday we felt that kindling of faith and friend- 
ship, and found the sure medicant for the souls 
of those who have looked over the wall into per- 
dition and staggered back on heaven's side. All 
mountain heights are difficult of ascent, but once 

133 



IN PORTS AFAR 

ascended, unless storms intervene, the sight is glo- 
rious. At Darjeeling we looked up to the roof of 
the world. For two hundred and fifty miles the 
massive Himalayas unrolled their splendors before 
our mortal eyes, flashing back with their white 
bosoms the glory of the Eternal. The yawning 
abysses beneath filled with clouds seemed to roll 
and swell like some vast sea, and the pure, impec- 
cable, snowy vastness of Kinchin junga was de- 
clarative of holiness and God. Up on a windswept 
height we plucked a prayer which some poor soul, 
feeling after God, had tied to a tree, and, folding 
it with some flowers from Gethsemane, we shall keep 
it as a mute witness that once we brought the prayer 
of a sorrowing heart to Him who sorrowed there. 

The Darjeeling tea plantations, clustering and 
clinging on every square foot of cultivable soil, pro- 
duce the rarest tea of the world's great farm, and 
add the charm of green things growing. Grown in 
that lofty altitude, the tea, perhaps like character, 
ripened close to the sky, adds a nameless flavor not 
duplicated by that grown on lower ground. 

Back in Calcutta, we preached for Mr. Wark in 
the First Church, one of the first five or six leading 
Churches of the connection. That Kansan is every 

134 



THE GREAT CIRCLE OF INDIA— II 

inch a man, and fewer men with larger life experi- 
ence is the lesson of his quick adjustment to that 
international parish. Miss Maxey is the elect lady 
who directs the affairs of the Deaconess Home. 
It was so good to find that little island of hope 
and calm in "the City of the Dreadful Night." 
We went on a night expedition with Miss Reeve, of 
the Lee Home, to a crowded section, where, with a 
stereopticon, to a court full of eager-faced natives 
she told the story of the Pilgrim's Progress. 

Three things clamor to get said before we con- 
clude this chapter. They have long been discussed 
in the private debating society of my judgment, 
and therefore we do not need to discuss them here, 
but simply enumerate them. 

First, the Missionary Society should in some way 
organize the special gifts department and send for- 
ward the appeals from the New York office, and 
not burden the district superintendents of India 
with the support as well as the selection and admin- 
istration of the native workers. The plan of the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society works ad- 
mirably. This is no stricture upon missions like 
that of David Lee, now, as always, on the William 
Taylor plan of self-support. 

135 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Second, some better plan of selecting mission- 
aries and of eliminating inefficient men from the 
field must be devised. Only two men we met in 
our work abroad would not have our welcome were 
we, as once, the head of a district; but when the 
two approximate two-fifths of the recruits to the 
force of the field in a single year, they mark an 
administrative failure. 

And third, one or two of the missionary bishops 
for India ought to be commissioned by some quasi 
authority for properly financing the India situa- 
tion. The North and Northwest India Conferences 
require an annual increase of $10,000 for the next 
five years. The debts of the Bombay properties, 
as well as those elsewhere, must be paid; that in- 
dustrial school of Mr. Bancroft enlarged for thou- 
sands instead of fifties. Following the Thoburn 
custom, which has become practically a precedent, 
one or two of those bishops should face the financial 
stone wall in America, not India. It is to be a long 
campaign, and like all kings going to war, we must 
count the cost and finance the campaign, not by 
three-per-cent cuts on the whole field, but by some 
animating consecration that will increase the sup- 
port of the gospel extension in the Indo-peninsula. 

136 



Chapter VIII 

HALF WAY 

/CALCUTTA, like New Orleans, is both sea- 
^^ port and river-port. The sailings are early 
in the day, so that the ship may reach the mouth 
of the Hughli, full of shifting bars and dangerous 
currents, before dark. We looked our last on the 
Eden Gardens, Fort William, the Hastings Bridge, 
and the Engineering College, and had final view 
of the botanical gardens founded in 1786. Ac- 
cording to Sir Joseph Hooker, they have contrib- 
uted more useful and ornamental tropical plants 
to public and private gardens than any other es- 
tablishment before or since. The "tea" industry 
of Northern India had its origin in the brain of 
one of its curators. There was more for India in 
his thought than in those "sublime instincts of an 
ancient people" about which congressmen talk so 
glibly. The first problem of life is food ; therefore 
the bread question presses. Correlated to it in 

137 



IN PORTS AFAR 

India, as elsewhere, is the labor question. The 
labor markets of the world are closed to them be- 
cause of their ancestral precedence code. You can 
not raise food enough to feed India with a crooked 
stick, nor harvest it with a reaping-hook, nor can 
you give a man work who will only work with men 
of a certain caste. It is good to think of the full 
dinner-pail that "tea" has brought to many men 
who even yet never have any food left after a meal. 
The Ellenga, of the British India Line, on which 
we sailed, is one of a large fleet of antiquated ships, 
making up in number what they lack in quality. 
Kipling long ago labeled the line as "The Mutton 
Mail,'.' because it carries sheep and correspondence 
to Rangoon. Sure enough the sheep were "shooed" 
aboard in droves, and the odor stayed with us to 
Singapore. There were fully two hundred black 
goats, to be sacrificed to Kali, who dearly loves 
"black sheep." The British India is the most pros- 
perous shipping corporation in the East. The 
ships are operated for profit, not for comfort. 
Like the ice-plant in our town, the corporation 
needs healthy competition. But if you are bound 
for Rangoon and the Shwe Dagon, pay up and 
haggle not. 

138 



HALF WAY 

The Hughli pilot leads a hard life, is full of 
strange stories, and he of the Ellenga knew all 
about Mark Twain, once pilot on the Mississippi. 
The pilot's pay is on a par with that of a country 
school teacher in Iowa, and he gets it for sending 
along a two-thousand-ton ship down the worst river 
in the world, with five or six hundred people aboard, 
at eight miles an hour, and then killing time in the 
estuary on a malodorous tug until he finds another 
ship in need of a pilot up-stream. The query rises. 
Could Clemens have become Mark Twain if bom 
on the banks of the Hughli.'^ 

We left the pilot at Sandheads, and all India 
dropped out of sight. India and the story of how 
it was won is the romance of the English Govern- 
ment, and the tragedy of how nearly it was lost in 
the Mutiny blanches the lips of brave men yet. Its 
thousand years of religious feud between Moham- 
medan and Hindoo, the venomous jungle of its race- 
hatreds and fierce ancestral distinctions make its 
retention a daily conquest. There is the Sphinx 
of Egypt looming vast and placid above the Nile 
desert, and the Muscovy monster crushing with one 
paw the Finns and leering at Constantinople: but 
India is the Sphinx of the Plain. Yearly the work 

139 



IN PORTS AFAR 

of pushing, wheedling, and browbeating its natives 
into good hving goes forward: 

'The cry of hosts ye humor, 

Ah! slowly toward the light; — 
Why brought ye us from bondage, 
Our loved Egyptian night?'* 

In "Take up the White Man's Burden," KipHng 
has caught the tidal mood of colonizing mankind 
now swelling in the tropics. There is much mawkish 
sentiment in London and Washington, but none of 
it discoverable in those viceroys, governors, com- 
missioners, residents, colonels, captains, and sub- 
alterns on duty in India; nor do they worry the 
London offices with long disquisitions on the riotous, 
degenerate, murderous life to which they are slowly 
putting an end. They concern themselves little 
with contemporary opinion, and leave their final 
appeal by deeds to posterity. The "big brass gen- 
erals" and the quiet, inglorious strong men, whom 
Kipling so nobly celebrates, are at their posts, as 
of old, tirelessly watching. The Mutiny put them 
"on guard" every hour. They are doing the eter- 
nal thing in a more or less eternal way, quite in 
contrast with our program in Mexico, where the 
best we can say to Americans is, "Pack up your 

140 



HALF WAY 

railroads, factories, coffee, sugar, and rubber plan- 
tations and come home." That seems like doing 
the contemporary thing in a contemporary way. 
It is idealism flying in panic and cringing ob- 
sequiously to Terror. And we are also supposed 
to be talking about coming home from the Phil- 
ippines ; the men who went to India may be trusted 
to stay there. 

Somewhere out in the crushed-sapphire colored 
water on the second day, between chota-hazra and 
"breakfast" we crossed the ninety-second parallel, 
thus completing in terms of longitude half way 
round from the Iowa farms to the college once more. 
Half way in miles was beyond Singapore, see-saw- 
ing, as we did, up to Hong Kong, down to Manila, 
and back again. Thus we came upon the threshold 
of the Farthest East. 

The Ellenga reached Rangoon Monday morn- 
ing of Passion Week. There was a "bar" to cross, 
for which the precise time of tide had to be com- 
puted and a new pilot taken on. We raced by the 
rice-ships and sampans of all styles and ages, and 
inferior only in smells to those of Canton. The 
Rangoon, one of the mouths of the Irawaddy, is 
a low-banked, muddy, unimpressive stream, and the 

141 



IN PORTS AFAR 

trip up the Ocalawaha, in Florida, exceeds in di- 
version anything to be obtained by riding up or 
down the Irawaddy. The British India ships he 
in port until Thursday, so there is ample time to 
go by rail to the capital, 

**0n the road to Mandelay, 

Where the flying fishes play. 
And the sun comes up like thunder, 
Outer China 'crost the bay," 

and come down by the river boat. Disappointment 
increases as to the square of the number of the 
tourists who take the trip. 

We set out under the direction of C. W. Sever- 
ance to take a census of the Buddhas in Rangoon. 
The first temple yielded 168, and with cheerful 
confidence in our ability to reach one thousand, we 
next tackled the Shwe Dagon, upheaving itself in 
the sun, girt with a scaffolding of bamboo poles, 
so that the Burmese may acquire merit by regilding 
its wonderful dome, neither Moslem nor Hindoo 
in type. When our total in that temple had reached 
1,500, with many nooks and chapels still to be 
enumerated, we quit. We rely for success upon 
patience and persistence, but for once they failed 
us. Including those awaiting purchase in the 

142 



HALF WAY 

art stores, we should estirriate that at least four 
thousand images of Buddha are to be found in 
Rangoon. We have "flag day" and "carnation 
day," and the English have "primrose day," but 
"Buddha day" is all the year round in Burmah. 
The new railroad carries an increasing number of 
tourists up "the river of the lost footsteps," but 
the swarms it brings down to the temple of the 
great god of Idleness there on the hill, surrounded 
by the English cantonment, constitutes a "yellow 
peril." The "land-grabbing" English are over 
lords to gods many, but none are more unique and 
more economically paralyzing than the god with 
his fifteen hundred Buddhas of the Shwe Dagon. 
That high place, winking its interrogation to the 
eastern sun, is the best explanation of why the 
English came and will likely stay. 

We attended the Passion Week services, spent 
delightful mornings in the gardens, shops, and tem- 
ples; visited the school, the Baptist Publishing 
House, and were vaccinated afresh in the municipal 
clinic. We went to Aloon and saw the huge ele- 
phants haul the great teak logs from the river's 
edge, where they had been rafted at high tide, and 
watched them "salaam" for us at the pick of the 

143 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Mahout ; the color, the women unveiled, the markets, 
the jail, the "Reclining Buddha," equal in impres- 
siveness to the one at Kamakura, are sights worth 
a year of languid Southern Europe. But most of 
all the Severance house, in Lancaster Road; the 
school of the sisterhood, next to it; the Buddhist 
mendicants, as they make their rounds begging for 
rice; the bread-fruit hanging on the trees, brings 
staccato to my thoughts if it is repressed in ex- 
pression. The Germans train all the young men 
for the army; in Burmah all the young men are 
educated for the priesthood. Plague and cholera 
persist the year round, and not merely the igno- 
rance, but the indifference of the comfortable folks 
at home to all that distant day's work, impresses 
me with its injustice and stupidity. For example, 
the General Conference has authorized Foreign mis- 
sionaries. Home missionaries, Ep worth League mis- 
sionaries, self-supporting missionaries, and Wom- 
an's Foreign missionaries. Let us hope that the de- 
voted household in Lancaster Road and the women 
adjacent, with all similar mission compounds, 
hemmed in by plague, cholera, smallpox of the 
black, deadly type, needing the united sympathy 
and increased support of the Church at home, can 

144 



HALF WAY 

count on a refusal of the General Conference to a 
further division of responsibility in missionary ad- 
ministration. 

Women with "bound feet" watched our landing 
from the lighter at Penang on Easter morning. It 
is the island of Paul and Virginia. Hundreds of 
'rikisha men stood ready to whisk us away to 
church or to the falls and temples five miles away. 
We went to the FitzGerald Memorial Church; 
roomy interior, handsome exterior; convenient to 
the Anglo-Chinese school, and reached by roads 
runixing on the Parabola. The Easter sermon there 
was like having again the holy sacrament from the 
hands of that great bishop of the ecclesia. After 
lunch at the Anglo-Chinese school. Dr. Pykett, one 
of the surpassing Englishmen, who has thrown 
himself with such energy and success into our work 
in the Straits Settlements, drove us to Cornelia 
FitzGerald's grave. She sleeps in a spot surrounded 
by such wild beauty as no other country could 
show, and contiguous to the spacious gardens. On 
Easter Day in such environment — who that has the 
Easter hope could repress the upspringing foun- 
tains of thanksgiving.^ St. Paul said, "The time 
of my departure is at hand," meaning either the 
10 145 



IN PORTS AFAR 

launching or the sailing of the Immortal Personal- 
ity. Whichever meaning may be imported into the 
phrase, the FitzGeralds were ready for decessus. 
"Our people die well." Let us more frequently 
make protest against the arrogance of science, 
which, as dogmatic as mediaeval theology, has re- 
vived the tenet of the Sadducees, "Who say there is 
no resurrection." In recent years science has 
properly asserted its theories against dogmatic 
theology, but there has been over-assertion as well. 
The public now find that they have only exchanged 
one priesthood for another, and we are now asked 
to confirm that nothing which can not be weighed 
and measured shall be allowed to possess validity. 
Sir Oliver Lodge has just differentiated the soul 
from its material embodiment as "the constant and 
identical personality running through one's expe- 
riences," and ranging from the discussion of its 
existence here to its continuity hereafter, and to 
the question of its immortality. Quietly, moder- 
ately, and firmly he has made his profession of 
faith in the persistence of personality beyond 
bodily death, of which and the broad truths of re- 
ligion he has been convinced by strict evidence. 
Doubtless his conclusions will be challenged, but 

146 





The Bum Palm. 



HALF WAY 

none will deny the force of his protests against the 
negations of science — pure dogmatism, though 
couched in the negative — or the validity of his ap- 
peal to the primal instincts and intimations of men 
in all ages and all lands. 

We took the tram the next day to an ancient 
"temple." We foUow^ed for miles along the road, 
fringed with native houses and shadowed by ever- 
lasting cocoanut palms. The heat was heavy with 
the reek of vegetation and the smell of earth after 
heavy rains. Birds whistled, thunders muttered in 
the hills, and the breath came heavy and vaporous, 
like that in a Turkish bath. It was like the land 
of the "lotus eaters." 

"And in the afternoon they came unto a land 
In which it seemed always afternoon." 

We climbed the long hill, fed the sacred fish, noted 
the guardian Gorgons, and penetrated to the re- 
cesses of the main pagoda. We saw a priest who 
conforms to the "Face" which Kipling describes; 
"the chin, jowl, lips, and neck were modeled faith- 
fully on the lines of the Roman empresses — the 
lolloping, walloping women that Swinburne sings 
about, and that we sometimes see pictures of. 

147 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Above this gross perfection of form came the Mon- 
goloid nose, narrow forehead, and flaring pigs'- 
eyes." His prototype was in Jerusalem on the day 
of the crucifixion, and he is a fit keeper "for a 
wilderness of clay dolls or a menagerie of jointed 
tigers." 

Singapore is Penang over again, and besides 
has many things to delight the eye. Its hostelries 
are famous, as such world-end locations are certain 
to become. But for us the Book Store and the 
Anglo-Chinese school are worth all the time and 
study a globe-trotter can give to them. Oldham 
Hall, named for the Rupert of the Missionary Sec- 
retariat, showed us the one challenge to democracy 
with its correlate equality which we found any- 
where in the missionary world. They provide a 
first and second-class "mess" for the boys who re- 
side there. It is made necessary by the crowds that 
threaten utterly to swamp our present inadequate 
facilities. There are 1,400 boys and men, segre- 
gated — esteeming Christianity to be the English 
language, physics, chemistry, biology, that is. 
Western science and democracy. Roberts College 
is the guarantor of Balkan freedom; those Anglo- 
Chinese schools of Penang and Singapore are the 

148 



HALF WAY 

pledge and prophecy of a Chinese Repubhc. Six 
days we roamed about the quaint city, visited, as 
everywhere, the American Consulate, talked poli- 
tics, and found in that gateway of the world men 
of consequence, who sit in social, financial, and gov- 
ernmental high places, talking with approval and 
intelligence of teaching, medical, and industrial 
missions. Had England given one-tenth the help 
to China that she has given to India, she would 
at this hour be the mistress of all lands and im- 
pregnable in the affections of a race yet to domi- 
nate the Orient. 

The Nile, a large intermediate ship of the Pen- 
insular & Oriental Line, deeply loaded and well 
appointed, eighth of our circumnavigating fleet, 
bore us to Hong Kong. The Sunday on board 
was as quiet and orderly as any ever kept in a 
New England village. One man, the commander, 
reverent, thoughtful, so impressed the passengers 
that those who might otherwise have been tempted 
to thoughtlessness and irreverence deported them- 
selves like they would on a holy day at home. The 
"service" read by the commander lasted just twenty 
minutes. The hymns, in which every one joined; 
the prayers, and the Scriptures, all regularly ap- 

149 



IN PORTS AFAR 

pointed for the day, were helpful, and the collec- 
tion for the Seaman's Orphanage was generous 
indeed. The English ships do the Sunday service 
quite to our satisfaction. 

The Nile steamed into Hong Kong through a 
multiplicity of islets and deeply indented shores, 
sometimes running down to the sea in little sandy 
coves, and at other times falling sheer in a cliff 
hanging above sea-worn caves, where the boom of 
the surf could be heard. The harbor is a world 
in itself; big liners at anchor, battleships, lines of 
junks, wallowing coal hulks, and thousands of sam- 
pans between miles of docks. We saw with rap- 
turous eyes a gunboat and a transport flying the 
American flag, and had our sympathy excited by 
a Chinese river steamer that had been looted by 
pirates and was flying a fl^g of distress. The 
"Peak," reached by an inclined tram, hangs 
frowningly above, dotted with green, and there is 
nothing so easily accessible in this wide world that 
is so wild and wonderful as the outlook from its 
top with its fifty miles of sky, and the fortress 
with its twelve-inch guns — and, they say, without 
men to fight them. But that is probably some 
English civilian trembling. Hong Kong is a 

150 



HALF WAY 

starting-point for Macao and Canton, and in all it 
detained us a week. Macao makes one think of 
Hell's Half Acre up in Yellowstone Park, save that 
the seething caldron is made up of gamblers and 
prostitutes. The ninety miles to Canton is one 
continual overhauling and passing of screw steam- 
ers, pig boats, junks, and ducking sampans. Lit- 
erally hundreds of houseboats, many of them 
sculled by women, with babies lashed to their backs, 
crowded about our steamer to take off some pas- 
senger or some package of freight. The mere 
mob, fighting for their places about the ship, was 
terrifying. But the city itself, through which 
tourists are borne in sedan-chairs by streets so nar- 
row that one can often touch both sides, is in- 
describable. The waves of yellow faces; the tier 
on tier of signs, red, yellow, black, and white; the 
pigs squealing as they were slaughtered ; the brazen 
dragons, the stench, the feathered jewelry shops, 
and the inlaid workers, baffled description. Only 
once, and that on Chicago Day, in 1893, at the 
World's Fair, were we caught in such a crowd. 

The Temple of the Five Hundred Genii, where 
some Jesuit fathers and Marco Polo appear in the 
gallery; the ancestral temple, the water clock, the 

151 



IN PORTS AFAR 

potter's field, where the executions take place; the 
Prison of Horrors, where in a Chinese Eden musee 
men are hacked, sliced, fried, and grilled; the city 
walls, where on the grass-grown top you may see 
rusty English guns spiked and abandoned; the 
myriads of dead in the cemetery, and a five-story 
pagoda are all in the itinerary, which goes on hour 
after hour until you are tired and disgusted, and 
remember the lines of the old Watts hymn, 

"Wallow until your lives be through; 
Satan's god children takes your due." 

There is one thing to be thankful for, and that 
is that there are neither dogs nor horses to be seen. 
Well it is for Psi, the Scotch collie which lives at 
our house, and for the handsome roadster that our 
district superintendent drives, that both were bred 
in Iowa. Dore ought to have seen Canton before 
he illustrated the "Inferno.'' 

The Presbyterian mission at Shek-Lung is a little 
paradise on the edge of Canton ; all the missions are 
oases in that desert of life. Yet any Chinese mis- 
sion makes one think of a small rowboat out on the 
Atlantic within hailing distance of the Titanic five 
minutes after she went down. At Hong Kong we 

152 



HALF WAY 

consorted with the Germans. We lodged at the 
Berhn FoundUngs' Home, Lutheran, whose habit- 
ants persist in the simple homely virtues which so 
commend their doctrines and their nationality. It 
was so restful after being carried in chairs, hurried 
along in 'rikishas, and chasing about in trams, to 
sit at the table after dinner and listen while the 
pastor read the evening lesson, and then with hymn 
and prayer to "Put out each feverish light" of 
those garish days. 

The Zafiro, sl trim little two-thousand-ton ship, 
with no more roll nor toss than a North River 
ferry boat, carried us safely to Manila. We passed 
Corregidor just at dawn and had a wide, long look 
at the bay, which already bulks so large in Ameri- 
can history, while the east was empurpling with 
the new day. Our daughter and other friends met 
us at the pier with only such welcome as they can 
give. Little could any of us have dreamed when 
we first heard the news of Dewey's exploit that in 
less than fifteen years we should be greeting each 
other in sight of Cavite and admiring together 
the corn growing in the field of insurrecto Agui- 
naldo. 



153 



Chapter IX 

THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

fTHHE bombardment of Alexandria by the Eng- 
-■- lish, the taking over of Tunis by the French, 
the present German emperor's activity in acquiring 
African territory, the annexation of Tripoli by 
Italy, and the American purchase and occupation 
of the Philippines belong to the catalogue of re- 
cent events involving the colonizing nations, all 
located in the temperate zone, in the government 
of tropical countries. The colonial activity of 
England and France antedates by a century these 
present-day enterprises, but with the English oc- 
cupation of Egypt the modem movement in colo- 
nization, essentially scientific in method and eco- 
nomic in purpose, begins. 

We have already alluded to the fact that Glad- 
stone had his hand forced in the Egyptian matter. 
In a similar way the nation forced McKinley's 
hand and thrust this insular administration upon 
him. It is easy to prophesy after an event, and 

154 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

grow wise about what should have been done. 
"Dewey should have sailed away!" But no one 
thought of that, or would have consented to it 
on May 2, 1898. "McKinley should not have paid 
$20,000,000 for them, according to the Treaty of 
Paris!" But it was McKinley, not our interlocu- 
tor, whom the people had elected to approve the 
negotiations. "Treat them as we did Cuba !" "Get 
a guarantee of their independence from the Great 
Powers;" "Give them to Japan," and so on, in- 
cluding every plan except the one we are now 
actually following. McKinley, like Gladstone, rec- 
ognized the National impulse. He understood the 

Nation, 

"whose dull voice is thunder 
And was the key beneath its finger pressed." 

Other Presidents have felt this imperative of public 
opinion. "The soul is where it acts," says Lotze; 
and Thomas Jefferson, contrary to all his own po- 
litical maxims, annexing Louisiana, was the soul 
of a larger country than any of which the beard- 
less colonels and young sages who won the Revo- 
lution ever dreamed. Grover Cleveland lacked 
imagination and missed his way when he hauled 
down the flag in Hawaii. The instinct of the 

155 



IN PORTS AFAR 

people judged It better than Mr. Cleveland, with 
all his sterling integrity. 

The Panama Canal zone is another case in point. 
President Roosevelt understood the Nation, and 
the Nation felt in him a response to its own com- 
manding purpose. The Hindoo syllogism is aca- 
demic: that of Occidental life is efficient. Some 
American Hindoos do not seem to know that Mr. 
Roosevelt would have been anathema in the public 
mind had he not gone forward: that the claims of 
Colombia for reimbursem'ent have less validity than 
those of Queen Liliuokalani, for she wrote ^^Aloha 
Oe," and that the Nation of America aided and ap- 
proved the purchase of the canal strip, and will 
praise the ex-President for it "world without end." 

The cuckoo is an anomaly in the bird-world. By 
some strange instinct it foregoes the labor of other 
birds in nesting and feeding, lays its eggs in alien 
nests, and entrusts the hatching of the foundling 
eggs and the rearing of the young to the owners 
of the nests it has taken. No one has come for- 
ward to explain how such an instinct is developed, 
nor do we know why other birds nest the eggs, and 
welcome and feed the intruders. Now, are we 
prepared to say that England, France, Germany, 

156 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

Italy, and the United States are cuckoos? and that 
Algiers, Egypt, China, India, and the Phihppines 
are alien nests, which these nations have appro- 
priated? 

The program of the Philippine commissioners 
is anything but cuckoo-like. They began by clean- 
ing up the Islands. Like the Panama Canal strip, 
the Islands had to be disinfected, vaccinated, and 
rendered immune against cholera and bubonic 
plague. Herein the United States has attempted 
more, and improved upon all that England or 
France has done. In 1902 there were 4,662 cases 
of cholera in Manila alone, with 3,560 deaths. The 
provinces had that same year 120,996 cases ; 77,972 
deaths resulting therefrom. In 1911 Manila had 
one case of cholera, with death resulting, and 226 
cases in the provinces, with 182 deaths. The 
cuckoo, if it is a cuckoo, brings some strange se- 
curity to the Philippine Islands' nest. Bubonic 
plague plays a continuous performance in all the 
great cities of the Orient. Human nature being 
as it is, and with such neighbors, Manila can not 
hope to entirely escape, but the quarantine, health 
inspection, and rigid sanitary regulations are so 
efficient that only sporadic cases of the plague now 

157 



IN PORTS AFAR 

occur. Hong Kong furnishes more plague in a 
month than Manila in a year. 

The economic development of the Islands is 
greatly dependent upon the increase of caribou 
and the introduction of cattle and animal labor. 
The rmderpest is as desolating to cattle as cholera 
and plague to the natives, and the fight the Gov- 
ernment makes against rinderpest is second only 
to that which it makes to save human life. It is 
common to meet some captain or lieutenant with 
a detail of constabulary coming or going to a 
rinderpest-mio^ci^di district, where, by the latest 
and most approved veterinary treatment, they save 
a few animals, isolate the scourge, and at times al- 
together stamp it out. 

Since 1907 the railroad mileage has increased 
from 122 to 455. The civilizing force of a rail- 
road is less appreciated, perhaps, in the United 
States than almost anywhere else. Our struggle 
for the control of passenger rates and freight tar- 
iffs, and against railroad, legislative, and judicial 
influence has obscured the dependence which eco- 
nomic and social progress must place on transpor- 
tation. One dollar spent on a railroad is worth a 
hundred invested in army equipment, and the 333 

158 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

additional miles oi railway are worth a hundred 
thousand rifles and millions spent on military oper- 
ations. Then add the public buildings, artesian 
wells, irrigation projects, and macadam roads that 
to the amount of SjSSS,^!^ pesos have been built 
out of the public revenues last year; then figure 
as much spent for the same purpose the year be- 
fore, and estimate that as much will be so expended 
the coming year, and the next; add the increased 
production of sugar, rice, hemp, and tobacco; the 
introduction of corn-growing, the diversifying of 
the crops, scientific coinage, a just levy of taxes 
and their honest expenditure, and a dozen other 
specifications which help toward economic inde- 
pendence, before you cry "Cuckoo." 

The educational program is unique in, that it 
purposes to reform the archaic and almost barbaric 
amusements of the whole people. Loungers about 
the railway depots carry game cocks under their 
arms, which suggest cock-fighting as the national 
game of the Tagalogs. Baseball has taken its 
place, and everybody, from the governor-general 
down, except a few nonconforming clergymen, 
play ball. They encourage labor and thrift by 
trade schools run as commercial shops; they have 

159 



IN PORTS AFAR 

opened up all the known vocational opportunities 
to the new generation. They have searched out 
native materials and made them available for indus- 
trial use, so that bamboo, Buri palm, Nipa and 
Abaca or Manila hemp are many times more com- 
mercially important than before the public schools 
taught their manufacturing possibilities. The 
Coast Guard service provides a great nautical 
school, and the constabulary gives opportunity for 
a military education, which opens rapid preferment 
ta those who are diligent and efficient. In a word, 
the Philippine schools provide a gainful occupation 
and an English education to every boy, and nurse's 
training, basketry, hat-making, cloth-weaving, do- 
mestic science, designing, and embroidery for every 
girl. 

The youth of the Government and the ardor of 
the American occupation is sure to impress the 
visitor. The vice-governor-general, also secretary 
of education, the director of education, his first and 
second assistants, are all men from the universities 
of the Central West, young, exhuberantly hopeful, 
with faces full of energy and free from cynicism. 
It is men of their type who maintain civil order, 
control the diseases of the climate, and attempt 

160 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

"by slow prudence to make mild 
A rugged people, and through soft degrees 
Subdue them to the useful and the good," 

and in the sixteen years since the Battle of Manila 
Bay have put the Islanders far on their way to 
self-respect, self-support, and self-control. 

It should not appeal to the public to say that all 
this is done without expense to the American tax- 
payer, but such is the case. Except for the regi- 
ments that are quartered in the Philippines, and 
the warships on station or in dry dock there, no 
expense attaches to the occupation. The Govern- 
ment might better quarter its troops at the Manila 
Camp McKinley, or at the Baguio Camp John 
Hay, than at many of the 152 army posts where it 
now scatters them. The same is true of the navy. 
Without expense to ourselves, by special tariffs, 
we have aided the Islanders, but except for the 
initial cost and the expense of suppressing the 
Aguinaldo insurrection, of actual outlay nothing. 
It is a reproach to the American Churches that 
great schools like the Anglo-Chinese school at 
Penang and the one of similar name at Singapore 
should be compelled to support themselves; so it 
seems to dampen enthusiasm to learn that in all 

n 161 



IN PORTS AFAR 

this the American taxpayer has no part. But the 
American Nation has furnished poHtical and social 
stabiHty and a group of men with great adminis- 
trative capacity, who have fertihzed by their pa- 
tience, accuracy, and enthusiasm thousands of 
Tagalogs, who in the passing of the years will keep 
up to the standards of capacity and integrity they 
have set. 

The upper-class Tagalog, usually, or often at 
least, a mestizo, does not understand the American. 
He has been reared in a practice of government 
where the official classes exploit the rank and file. 
Since Legazpi occupied Manila, in 1571, the repre- 
sentatives of the old Spanish families have grown 
rich in office. That is what office means to them — 
a chance to enrich themselves at public expense. 
It is in the blood, and has been as long as they have 
been developing their facial angle. Aguinaldo fail- 
ing in insurrection, grew rich in land and pesos 
by the failure. No one reproaches him for it ; it 
was expected; anything else would have been in- 
comprehensible. That members of the Philippine 
commission should govern without graft and treat 
public office as a public trust excites their infidelity. 
Nor can they explain why a great, wise, and be- 

162 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

neficent Government does not punish their frequent 
lapses from loyalty; they think it some weakness 
in the government. Our long forbearance while 
they steal rifles, shoot down soldiers, and run 
amuck under their law of "jura mentado," they 
count inability on our part to make reprisals. 
The}^ misunderstand the reasons for granting a 
Philippine Assembly even now, and they misunder- 
stood the long sufferance of the American Congress 
and the American people, while peonage and slav- 
ery went on for lack of penal clauses giving 
validity to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con- 
stitution. They think that American citizens be- 
lieve that their honor would suffer if penal clauses 
were enacted for punishing such criminals. The 
new Administration deserves credit for the prompt- 
ness with which the Assembly enacted the new laws 
upon the arrival of the new governor-general. But 
the simple-hearted Igorrote and Ifagao seem to 
appreciate our sincerity, and perhaps just as the 
birds whose nests are stolen tolerate the cuckoo- 
eggs, so in some blind way these dependent heathen 
better estimate our motives than the caciques of 
mixed blood, and the hereditary disposition to 
graft and official exploitation. 

163 



IN PORTS AFAR 

There are now three distinct forces in the Phil- 
ippines making for civilization ; first is the Govern- 
ment, which is doing the work of the teaching mis- 
sionary, the medical missionary, with the powers 
of the policeman added. Second or third, for the 
order is not determinative, should be mentioned the 
Catholic archbishop. Dr. Harty, formerly of St. 
Louis. Six or eight American priests followed 
him to the field. The archbishop looks like the 
typical American with Irish forbears; face and 
bearing mark him as well fitted to be the religious 
leader of 7,000,000 Filipinos, nominally Christian, 
at least. In his person and character he has done 
much to recover influence and sympathy for the 
Roman Church. Granted that he is of the Farley- 
Falconio group of churchmen, is surrounded by 
Spanish clerics, who utter the most absurd opinions 
and prefer ungrantable requests in the name of a 
papal delegate, he yet seems the diplomatic equal 
of Archbishop Ireland, and on the spiritual level 
of the present Pope Pius X. The Protestant mis- 
sionaries in the Islands are, to compare them to 
army chaplains, few in number, much ordered about 
by colonels and generals, and yet by virtue of 
character and conduct of great consequence to 

164 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

armies and nations. The Government's part is to 
educate and maintain health and order. The 
archbishop's part is to conform the Roman CathoHc 
Church to the fact of a modern American Govern- 
ment, and with the help of American priests reform 
the native priesthood from the mediaeval Spanish 
to the English-Irish-American standard. The 
Protestant part is to set a standard of temperance, 
purity, Sabbath-observance; to build dormitories 
for men and women in connection with all the nor- 
mal and provincial high schools, and thus exemplify 
the decent, self-respecting life which is the one 
basis for American citizenship. They may as they 
will serve as chaplains extraordinary to army, navy, 
civil service employees, and historic Church, warn- 
ing, encouraging, and bringing to the broad glare 
of publicity lapses from the integrity and broad- 
mindedness which America expects of all its indi- 
viduals and institutions, besides uttering that evan- 
gelistic message which men of good will have 
sounded from the beginning. 

Congress can confer anarchy; independence is 
beyond its power at the present writing. By some 
premature action, just as the establishing of the 
Philippine Assembly with its present powers was 

165 



IN PORTS AFAR 

premature, Congress may aid to establish two self- 
styled "republics," one terrorized by the Moros and 
Visayans, the other certifying to the exploitation 
of diverse peoples to the number of 8,000,000 by 
a few hundred Tagalogs, to whom, because they 
understand either English or Spanish, the Govern- 
ment perforce must be committed. "One free 
people can not govern another," said James An- 
thony Froude; but that Is not saying that they 
may not co-operate with each other, that they may 
not federate their forces for protection, for mutual 
advantage, and for conservation and economy of 
resources. The United States are free and self- 
governing, If they are not independent. 

Independence is a state of civilization to be ac- 
quired and realized, not conferred ; in the language 
of events, if not in formal words, democracy has 
enumerated the conditions on which modern Inde- 
pendencies may occur ; they are : self-support, after 
some simple, hard-working, self-sacrificing stand- 
ard which we are all quick to recognize; self-con- 
trol, so that the verdict of a majority serves as a 
warrant for orderly procedure and a warning 
against revolution; self-respect, so that sensitive- 
ness does not too much depreciate resourcefulness 

166 



THE GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURE 

in the presence of difficulties, and weaken the cour- 
age with which we meet them; intelligence and a 
deepening consciousnes of what good and evil, duty 
and pleasure are. No sentimental associations can 
waive any one of these terms, nor can self-interest 
bribe our partiality to set them aside. Because 
we have a July 4, 1776, is not per se proof that 
the Philippine Islanders are ready for self-govern- 
ment. When a large body of middle and lower 
class citizens, increasing in number and influence 
with each passing year, knowing what it means, 
yearn for independence; when another large body 
of Filipinos year after year put on record and 
reiterate their consuming desire to be received into 
the American Union as a Territory, we shall have 
evidences that may make action advisable. Until 
that time the words defining our National policy 
may remain in abeyance. 



167 



Chapter X 

EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

^^TT^ITCHENER'S SCHOOL" is one of the 
-"- -^ flashlight phrases to the credit of KipHng. 
It illustrates his incisive way of getting at the 
heart of things, and his picturesque power of pre- 
senting contemporaneous events with artistic effect 
and in decisive fashion. The dedication of Gordon 
College at Khartoum gave him opportunity to com- 
press into a few lines the duty of colonizing peo- 
ples, and his use of the incident has not only im- 
bedded the fact of the college into the history of 
our own times, but also indicated education as the 
sure process from brute force to spiritual enlarge- 
ment. The best traditions of the race relate to the 
instruction of the young, and the nations that put 
greatest capital into teaching live best and longest. 
Kitchener's School celebrates the English race as 
the great "teaching nation," and their genius in 
this particular is eccentric to the verge of madness. 

168 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

"Knowing that ye are forfeit by battle, and have no 

right to live. 
He begs for money to bring you learning — and all the 

English give. 
It is their treasure — it is their pleasure — thus are their 

hearts inclined; 
For Allah created the English mad — the maddest of all 

mankind! 

"They do not consider the Meaning of Things; they con- 
sult not creed nor clan. 

Behold, they clap the slave on the back, and, behold, 
he arise th a man! 

They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before 
their cannon cool, 

They walk unarmed by twos and threes to call the living 
to school." 

But the school, according to the poem, is an ex- 
planation of the men. This Mohammedan school- 
master, who had sers^ed with the Bengal Infantry 
at Suakim, the supposed author of the poem, gropes 
to the social meaning of the school and the attitude 
of the school teacher. It is the English who 

"Have set a guard on the granaries, securing the weak 

from the strong, 
And said, *Go, work the water-wheels that were abolished 

so long.* " 

We know the function of the school: first, to 
select and train leaders; and second, to raise the 

169 



IN PORTS AFAR 

mass of the people to the plane of intelligent par- 
ticipation in all essential social activities. But 
more than this education modifies a nation in an 
entirely original and pecular way. The problem 
of Darwin is, "How does environment affect men.'^" 
but education conforms environment to ideas and 
ideals that in result preserve and perpetuate the 
men who have modified their surroundings. We all 
recollect Darwin's statement about the influence of 
cats on the growth of clover in their neighborhood ; 
have read the effect of the European rabbits in 
New Zealand, and have discussed pro and con the 
English sparrow, as to whether he benefits by eating 
canker worms more than he damages by driving 
away native birds. So the importation of a virile 
race of men to Egypt, to India, or the Philippines, 
men used to plethora of bread, and knowing how 
to raise it, brings about a rearrangement of social 
relations. These men act as a ferment, exemplify 
new standards, initiate new methods, set new pre- 
cedents, and fertilize by their vigor and efficiency 
the agriculture, trade, and industry of the new 
land. 

Kitchener, with his orders to punish the mur- 
derers of General Gordon, parallels Admiral Dewey 

170 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

with his instructions "to find and destroy the Span- 
ish fleet." There are many ready to sneer at Eng- 
land as bent on merely extending trade, and who 
denounce the Soudan expedition as jingoism. 
Kipling is nothing, say some, but a "jingo" and 
a sort of unofficial member of Parliament represent- 
ing "imperialism" as his constituency. England 
probably deserves criticism, but it should be for not 
doing in Armenia what she did in the Soudan. 
It is easy to cry "imperialism," as if that settled 
anything. Its social value or political force is 
about equal to the Oriental method of repljdng to 
whatever difficult question is proposed by the un- 
impeachable truism, "Allah is great." Not to fall 
back on the gods when a proximate principle can 
be found is one of the superiorities of Christianity 
to pagan faiths. It is proof of an efficient as dis- 
tinguished from an inefficient intellect, and is guar- 
antee that England will continue to govern 

**Tliose new-caught sullen peoples. 
Half devil and half child," 

over whom she has gradually assumed control. A 
certain amount of self-assertion is indispensable to 
national as well as individual existence, and any- 

171 



IN PORTS AFAR 

thing that will rouse the sleeping nerve-centers of 
national self-respect, such as the occupation of 
Algiers by the French or the conquest of Tripoli 
by the Italians, is well worth while. It is none the 
less good work if trade is increased by it. Law and 
order, increased tillage of land, and better ideas of 
equity and justice have likewise resulted. Kitch- 
ener's School is notice that civilization sends out to 
the world that independent nations must educate 
their children. 

America interfered in Cuba \vith something 
like Christian motives, and the occupation of the 
Philippines was a reluctant second move, made nec- 
essary by the first step. The nation would not be 
content to administer the Islands with any other 
intent than to benefit the Islanders. Wages have 
doubled since the American occupation, and only 
the fact that they are an American dependency pro- 
tects them now. Left to themselves, the Philippines 
would be overwhelmed by the migrating Chinese 
just as the Straits Settlements, Java, and Indo- 
China have been overwhelmed. The Japanese by 
trade discriminations or otherwise would certainly 
add them to the Mikado's realnis, even if by any 
stretch of the imagination they could be thought 

172 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

able to protect themselves against the Chinese. 
Democracy has seemed to fail in Latin America, 
either from political tradition inherited from Spain, 
or from lack of universal education. The Fili- 
pinos have the same political training as Latin 
America; if by education he can become possessed 
of the self-governing capacity hitherto shown only 
by the white race, the altruism of America will be 
demonstrated beyond question. 

One does not need to go to the Philippines to 
learn the relationship of education to industry, 
and the recent tremendous expansion of industrial 
training. But an ordinary traveler could not spend 
a month in the islands without feeling that they 
have there an able group of young and enthusias- 
tic teachers who have mapped out a unique edu- 
cational program and are carrying it forward by 
methods of instruction, entertainingly original and 
free from all suspicion of educational tradition. 
The program of Dr. Kerschensteiner, of Munich, 
whose objective is a pupil in training to take his 
place as a useful citizen in the largest capacity, 
finds its counterpart in the educational system of 
the Philippines. 

We should expect to find graded school, high 

173 



IN PORTS AFAR 

school, normal and trade school. In the trade 
schools we should expect carpentry, cabinet-mak- 
ing, basketry, straw-braiding, and hat-making, 
sandal and slipper manufacture, weaving, em- 
broidery, and domestic science. But to search out 
the native materials available for industrial use, to 
establish new industries, to multiply tenfold the 
productive power of human labor, in tea, rice and 
sugar plantations, to reform the amusements of a 
whole people, to make trade and agricultural 
schools financially self-supporting, and to direct 
young men to every vocational path, from marine 
officer to supreme court judge, and meanwhile to 
keep zest in the practice of striving toward an 
educational end, is to justify the word of an Amer- 
ican scholar to Ex-President Taft, that our Govern- 
ment was "doing the most interesting and most 
promising piece of original work in education now 
in progress anywhere in the world." It might be 
added that all this has been accomplished at one- 
tenth the cost for similar work per capita in 
America. 

One scarce knows where to begin in an exposition 
of the unique aim and quality of American educa- 
tion in the islands. Let us have the first paragraph 

174 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

on com. Corn is king in the United States, and 
will be in the Philippines. Once in Germany we 
attended a fair, or perhaps we would better call it 
a social function, held for the popularizing of 
corn-food products. In a way, agricultural educa- 
tion in the Philippines has had as one of its direct 
aims the growing of corn. Out there a young and 
aggressive group of teachers from the American 
corn-belt has preserved the memory of the tasseled 
brigade of the royal corn, and set the islanders into 
an acute palpitation to raise the best field of corn. 
A kodak picture recently produced in the Christian 
Advocate showed the famous Aguinaldo, leader of 
the insurrection and, next to Rizal, hero of the 
Tagalogs, standing with the first assistant director 
of education in a prize acre of corn planted and 
cultivated by Aguinaldo, Jr. One needs to go to 
the Philippines to understand what that picture 
means : a rich man's son actually at manual labor ; 
a Filipino, not loving labor, winning a prize 
thereby ; and thus exciting the emulation of a mil- 
lion like labor-unloving Filipinos, who could be 
taught in no other way that work is honorable and 
indolence one of the seven deadly sins. All the 
diplomacies of modern courts, cabinets, and cabals 

175 



IN PORTS AFAR 

do not equal the subtle -finesse in putting the Fili- 
pino boy to work. It is Tom Sawyer up to date, 
not with whitewash and brush, and fence to be cov- 
ered, but his American counterpart under the blaz- 
ing tropic glare, with plow and hoe, and corn to 
be grown. They have the young women in the 
com business, too. They hold multiplied corn 
demonstrations, where the young women, students 
of the domestic science departments of the pro- 
vincial schools, under the direction of domestic 
science teachers, prepare and serve dishes of corn- 
foods to vast crowds that hour after hour surround 
the booths. Would all Mount Pleasant go to a 
mango fair? They would if they had but once 
tasted a ripe, juicy, delicious mango. Would all 
Dumequete go to a corn-product festival? Six 
thousand of them did. There were six different 
dishes of corn prepared and sold, and probably 
four thousand ate of one or more of these prepared 
dishes. What a sideshow the corn-germinating box 
was, and how the thousands looked at the selected 
seed-ears! American plows and corn-shellers and 
cornmills were all on exhibition, and a swarm of 
boys, some of them dressed as fat, husky clowns, 

176 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

wore placards, "I eat com;" others, dressed as lean 
clowns, wore other placards, "I eat rice," while 
all took part in the band that furnished music and 
amusement for the crowd. Rice is the Oriental 
food; unnumbered millions rejoice and feast when 
it is plenty, and mourn and starve when it is scarce. 
But corn and corn pone, and corn cakes, like science 
and the English language, and the Christian faith, 
belong to Occidental civilization. It is suggestive 
of fat swine, thick beefsteaks, butter and cheese, 
and the introduction of com to the Philippine 
Islands is naturalization, revolution, and revelation. 
The same subtlety is marked in the athletics in- 
troduced and fostered by the bureau of education. 
The problem of abolishing the American saloon, 
so that it will stay abolished, is to find something 
better and substitute it for the saloon. So these 
Tagalogs have amusements practiced for three 
hundred years in the islands, and by their forbears, 
both Spanish and Malay, for century on century 
before Philip II ruled. The two most typical were 
cock and bull fighting. It is needless to expatiate 
upon the utter cruelty of both, nor mention the gam- 
bling and general lawlessness consequent upon them. 
12 177 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Now comes the former secretary of education, one- 
time major in the Spanish-American War, member 
of Congress, Federal judge in the islands, member 
of the Philippine Commission before he was forty 
years old. He nominates for director of education 
and first and second assistant directors of education 
three big, young Americans, fresh from big, whole- 
some, American universities. The problem up to 
this quartet is how to abolish cock and bull fights. 
In fifteen seconds they all leap to the same induc- 
tion, "Let us introduce baseball." Forthwith it 
is done. The vacant lots are occupied, attendance 
at the chicken and bull fights falls off; the sport- 
ing goods firms are requisitioned from America; 
sweaters and "letters'' appear on runners, hurdlers, 
and players; the physical directors of the Young 
Men's Christian Association are drafted as coaches ; 
every teacher of the male persuasion gets into the 
game. Everybody played ball, or coached or 
rooted at the games. The clergy were not immune, 
and, barring the nonconformist missionaries, all 
the clergy in the islands could probably be con- 
victed of playing baseball on Sunday. Basket ball, 
volley ball, relay ball, and track athletics followed 

178 



EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 

in the procession until a nation of gamblers and 
cock-fighters forgot the stupid and cruel sports of 
even ten years ago and have become naturalized 
Americans at least in their devotion to the Amer- 
ican game. They run like the wind, leap like light- 
ning, and can peg a ball as far as their American 
compatriots, on the average nine inches higher in 
stature. In Tokyo we saw the all-Filipino team 
play Meiji, the imperial university nine; and to 
behold eight thousand Japanese rooting, waving 
pennants, and chaffing the umpire made us think 
that Luzon, Japan, and the United States had long 
since formed the triple baseball alliance. The 
Olympic games for Eastern Asia, where Filipino, 
Jap, and Chinese competed, the crowds that at- 
tended and the new standards of manhood that in 
those games had rapid growth speak volumes for 
the educational experiment which has succeeded be- 
yond all expectation in the Philippines. 

The nautical school, tea cultivation, the making 
of Bally-wag hats, the adoption of the Rigadone, 
the stately old dance of the Filipinos, the way a 
clump of abaca plants have been taught to disap- 
pear and presto to reappear as a car-load of ropes, 

179 



IN PORTS AFAR 

hats, slippers, baskets and cloth, and the ingenuity 
developed in the use of the buri palm, w^ould each 
make paragraphs as adventurous and fascinating 
as any tale Jack London ever wrote of these South- 
ern seas. 



180 



Chapter XI 

CONTENT AND PER CONTRA 

fTlHE content of American education in the Phil- 
-■■ ippines is not quite so easy to delimit as its 
extent, yet it offers several specifications generally 
applicable. 

Under the Spanish rule only a very few, the 
children of the great families and those in training 
for the priesthood, were educated; and even these, 
judged by the present-day American standards, 
scarcely deserve the term. It can not be claimed 
that the Jesuit colleges fostered a genuine desire for 
learning. Their students seldom pursued learning 
for its own sake, but rather to qualify for govern- 
ment service or the clerical profession. The old 
education for the ruling classes consisted for the 
most part of theology and literature through the 
medium of the Spanish language, with a smatter- 
ing of law, art, and music added. The educational 
value of the mediaeval philosophy and theology 

181 



IN PORTS AFAR 

commonly in vogue is open to question. The Latin 
taught was that of the Church ^'fathers," and the 
horizon was limited to the ecclesiastical propa- 
ganda. The young men thus trained could not 
know the tremendous economic waste involved in 
the fact that almost one-fourth the property in 
Spain was in the possession of the Church ; that in 
the year 1550, twenty-one years before Legazpi 
founded Manila, there were in Spain 58 arch- 
bishops, 684 bishops, 11,400 monasteries, 312,000 
secular priests, 400,000 ecclesiastics, and nuns in 
like proportion. They held enormous amounts of 
property, and even the primate of the Spanish 
Church advised Philip II to found no more monas- 
teries. The graduates of the Jesuit colleges never 
learned the consequences of clerical idleness, the ex- 
ploitation of labor, which of necessity follows the 
withdrawal of such a large proportion of the wealth 
from taxation, and remained in ignorance of the 
economic conditions of the Filipino people, know- 
ing neither the history of the mother country, nor 
the processes of the government under which they 
lived. 

There is another objection to the purely literary 
training which any language furnishes, namely, 

182 



CONTENT AND PER CONTRA 

the inaccuracy into which Hterature often falls. 
For example, take Macaulay and his judgment 
against Frederick the Great in the matter of Se- 
lesia. The Heritage-Brotherhood made between 
Joachim II, Marquis of Brandenburg, and Fred- 
erick II, Duke of Liegnitz {Erbverbrilderung) , 
was a very common form of pact among German 
princes well disposed toward each other. The right 
of each to dispose of their lands in any manner 
of way had been saved entirely by each and care- 
fully acknowledged. The privilege had been con- 
firmed again and again. Emperor Ferdinand de- 
termined to prohibit it, and the Duke of Liegnitz, 
under the stress of kingly pressure, was compelled 
to submit, but went so far as to append a codicil 
to his will, saying that he considered the Heritage- 
Brotherhood as valid and binding upon him and 
his duchy, though it had been overruled by the 
vassals of Bohemia. The king and emperor at- 
tempted in like manner to coerce the Brandenburg- 
ers into surrender of their deed, but Joachim II 
and all of his successors steadily refused to give up 
that bit of written parchment. When the agree- 
ment became actionable, on the accession of Fred- 
erick the Great, all of these conclusive proofs were 

183 



IN PORTS AFAR 

easily available, and the English world should have 
understood it and sympathized accordingly. Now, 
Lord Macaulay was eloquent and literary, and much 
in vogue. He was not scientific, nor accurate, and 
has succeeded in prejudicing thousands of people 
who should have been well affected toward the great 
German king, but for his inaccurate statement of 
the merits of the case. In the same way thousands 
of fair-minded English people are still filled with 
indignation when they read of the atrocious acts 
of Clive and Hastings, as related by Macaulay, re- 
counted as occurring in the conquest of India. No 
suspicion reaches their minds of the truth that these 
horrors never occurred, and yet they continue to 
furnish an unfailing source of invective and ob- 
loquy. His brilliant essays based upon Mill's in- 
accurate history, and Burke's speeches, drama 
rather than fact, are utterly unreliable. Men of 
his own generation investigated the original sources, 
and eye-witnesses disproved and discredited every- 
thing but the imaginative work of Macaulay. 
Both are illustrations of the astounding inaccura- 
cies into which men of merely literary training may 
fall. The results of present-day magazines and 
editorial writing, saturated as they are with poli- 

184 



CONTENT AND PER CONTRA 

tics, and by inference teaching that governments 
are usually offensive and miserably unwise, are mis- 
chievous in the extreme. The newspapers continue 
to fill the Filipino discussions with invectives, and 
the "politicos" who are ambitious for place, wealth, 
and power, with their imitative faculty, assume 
that for the United States to delay granting inde- 
pendence for a generation is proof positive that 
the President and Congress constitute a tyranny 
similar to that of George III, Lord North, and his 
Parliament. To quote Sir John Strachey, on a 
similar issue, "this sort of education is dangerous 
fare for Asiatic brains." Already the daily papers 
are reporting that if independence is delayed a 
revolutionary outbreak is to be expected. Respect 
for authority is always hampered by the speeches 
and writings of foolish and selfish political agi- 
tators. The strict and sober tests of truth, which 
modern science and economics alone can supply, 
have heretofore been utterly wanting in the educa- 
tion of the Filipinos. This corrective is the fore- 
most discernible content of American education in 
the islands. It is scientific and economic, and the 
situation in the islands echoes what Sir Henry 
Maine once said of the English education in India : 

185 



IN PORTS AFAR 

"The native literature is supremely and deliberately 
careless of all precision in magnitude, number, and 
time. ... It stands in need beyond everything 
of stricter criteria of truth. It requires a treatment 
to harden and brace it, and scientific teaching is 
exactly the tonic its infirmities call for." 

The American education in the Philippines is 
admirable likewise in the emphasis it puts upon 
manual labor. Huxley has a dictum that the dif- 
ference between the apes in England and the apes 
in Africa is that the former have a thumb oppos- 
able to four fingers. The hand that is thus formed, 
the bodily variations uniformly associated, the sense 
of touch and balance that have developed with it, 
make it one of the dependent variables that becomes 
a factor in the diff*erential that marks the human. 
The hand is the one tool that man did not make 
for himself, and its willing use is sure guide-post 
to civilization. As a rule all tropical peoples dis- 
like physical exertion. Just as in America thou- 
sands prefer clerical work, or some indoor employ- 
ment, so the Filipinos want occupations that will 
allow them to wear clean duck clothing and work 
with gloves on their hands. That is the limit of 
respectable toil. An expert in agriculture must be 

186 



CONTENT AND PER CONTRA 

willing, in case of necessity, to work with his hands ; 
a good engineer must be master of mechanical arts 
and ready to use his hands. Often this is prohib- 
itive to the natives, who have been trained by the 
example of the Spaniards and Mestizos to rely on 
literary culture and to regard manual labor as de- 
meaning. Handwork by the leaders is paramount 
to the industrial development planned by the civic 
leaders. It will take regiments of engineers, agri- 
culturists, skilled mechanics, and draughtsmen to 
reform the economic conditions of the islands. 
Their efficiency must be based upon scientific knowl- 
edge, technical training, and manual skill. The 
young women show a noticeable backwardness to 
take the domestic science courses, and the young 
men a reluctance to train for engineers and similar 
occupations. Young men in the United States, 
for the most part, are practical and eager to get on. 
Temperamentally they are unfitted for the slow, 
plodding ways and years that are essential to mak- 
ing genuine scholars; they take the short cut to 
success by tools and mechanisms. The educational 
problem at home is to make them see that a mere 
handling of tools can not make the mechanical en- 
gineer who conceives great manufacturing enter- 

187 



IN PORTS AFAR 

prises, stupendous public works, and carries them 
forward to completion. He needs to look for the 
mentality and sentiment with which to equip his 
imagination and enlarge the horizon of his concep- 
tions. But in the Philippines the problem is to get 
a whole generation to learn that breadth of percep- 
tion and the higher viewpoint is dependent for final 
efficiency on practical adaptation : on ability to illus- 
trate the control of materials by the use of tools 
as books. It is part ignorance, but also part in- 
dolence. The Philippine education proceeds on the 
assumption that product of the brain multiplied 
by the hand, not the square of the brain or the 
hand, approximates the highest human capacity. 
This underlies the whole educational system. Pri- 
mary, grade, and high school instruction are 
planned to undermine the prejudice against work 
and to excite all to prepare for some gainful occu- 
pation by the rewards of labor and the avenues to 
leadership which the system aflFords to those with 
manual training. 

The moral content is not so certainly praise- 
worthy. There is no use in discussing whether the 
government could do otherwise than hold itself 
rigidly aloof from all concern with religious edu- 

188 



CONTENT AND PER CONTRA 

cation; but it is not too much to say that the 
educational advances have been on the intellectual 
rather than on the moral side. The Filipino past 
has not been favorable to the cultivation of civic 
or ecclesiastic virtue, and we can not but feel that 
it would have been politically wise to show interest 
and sympathy with the habits of thought and cus- 
toms that are inseparably associated with the Puri- 
tan forbears. 

The American occupation has not taken the 
American Sabbath to the Philippines. That tall, 
white angel, the Holy Day of Protestantism, has 
been overwhelmed by the continental holiday of 
France, Italy, and Spain. Education, daily pa- 
pers, athletics, amusements, roadways, and means 
of conveyance have all been made to conform to 
American ideas. Even the beautiful, stately 
"rigadone," the pure, popular, and approvable 
dance of the Philippines, is going into desuetude, 
displaced by the waltz, two-step, and turkey trot. 
But civil government officials, army officers, Amer- 
ican tourists, and the Protestant Episcopal clergy 
have conformed to usage, not helped to transform, 
according to ideal, and a nation without the Sab- 
bath is forthcoming. 

189 



IN PORTS AFAR 

The reasons are not far to seek. The Sabbath 
with the Roman church has been a day of worship 
in its few early hours, and a holiday for the late 
forenoon, afternoon, and evening. By reason of 
the climate, the Catholic church services are held 
as early as 5 and 6 o'clock. In the Jesuit Church 
in Manila a later service is held, but among the 
native populations all over the islands the religious 
services are ended by 8 o'clock in the forenoon. 
That is before the average American has break- 
fasted and read his morning paper. In the army 
at times the pressure of events makes anything but 
a holiday impossible. Usually there is no chaplain, 
and where there is an English service, unless some 
major or colonel sets a rigid example and himself 
attends it, the meeting goes by default so far as 
the rank and file are concerned. The heads of the 
insular government, from Ex-President Taft down, 
have not been given to Sabbath keeping in the evan- 
gelical sense, and the Bureau of education, to con- 
trovert the cock-fighting habits of the people, have 
been encouraging baseball, volley ball, and basket 
ball games on Sunday afternoon. The great Manila 
Eight-Day Carnival starts in on Saturday, so as to 
run over two Sundays. Under the circumstances, 

190 



CONTENT AND PER CONTRA 

perhaps, we ought to be satisfied that baseball 
games are usually scheduled for Sunday afternoon. 

Major-General Bell forbade the regimental teams 
from playing polo on Sunday, and the Greek audi- 
torium, which he caused to be built at Camp John 
Hay, gives opportunity for great religious gather- 
ings while the capital is at Baguio. 

The English in Egypt, Straits Settlements, In- 
dia, and China do better than the Americans are 
doing in the Philippines. If they do not trans- 
form, at least they do not conform. The English 
red-coats, semper ubique, line up for service at 
the establishment, or at the nonconformist Church 
of his selection, every Sunday morning. Usually 
there is a volunteer service at the barracks in the 
evening. One of the pleasures of an American on 
a circumnavigating tour is to be invited by some 
major or captain to speak to the men perhaps as 
late as 9 o'clock in the evening. There you maj'' 
hear four or five hundred men sing the great hymns 
of the Church, and they always listen attentively. 
On all the English boats the captain reads the serv- 
ice Sunday morning, and after repeated hearings 
we confess to liking it, and thinking it exceedingly 
fit and appropriate. 

191 



IN PORTS AFAR 

We are launched on such an adventure in the 
Phihppines as our fathers could not have foreseen. 
In all details, save in this of the Sabbath, the ex- 
periment has been conducted with such dignity and 
capacity as to render it unique in colonizing an- 
nals. We would that it might have this added 
grace. To keep one day for meditation, prayer, 
and the assembling of ourselves together has seemed 
important to Christianity from its very beginning. 
There is something in the formality, as England 
has learned. The Filipino peoples are Christian, 
and at present they are American. We owe it to 
our Pacific neighbors, the Chinese and Japanese, 
and to our wards for the time being, the Filipinos, 
to conform officially to Protestant type and set 
them an example of Sabbath observance. Let the 
Sabbath peace and quiet pervade the islands '^like 
the sweet presence of a good diff^used, making the 
world fairer, life nobler, and the people themselves 
more reverent and more righteous.' 



?) 



192 



Chapter XII 

THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT IN 
THE PHILIPPINES 

WHEN Dean C. Worcester, Secretary of the 
Interior for the Philippine Commission, 
published his report on "Slavery and Peonage," 
he issued an indictment against the Philippine As- 
sembly, showed the utter unreliability of Seiior 
Manuel Quezon, the Territorial representative in 
Congress, and assured his own dismissal from pub- 
lic service in the islands. The Filipino leaders have 
long been accustomed to speak of the "unpopu- 
larity" of the Secretary of the Interior, and yet to 
him the country is indebted for a clear, straight- 
forward statement of a situation and knowledge of 
acts against which the Philippine Commission long 
since decreed penalties. His "unpopularity" will 
be fully appreciated when it is known that Senor 
Quezon has loudly and recklessly raised the claim 
13 193 



IN PORTS AFAR 

that there was no such thing as slavery in the 
provinces, as follows: 

"As a Filipino familiar with the facts in the case, 
I do not hesitate to qualify the letter of Secretary 
Worcester as being at once false and slanderous. 
It is false, because there does not exist slavery in 
the Philippines, or at least in that part of the coun- 
try subject to the authority of the Philippine As- 
sembly. It is slanderous because it presents the 
Philippine Assembly by innuendo, if not openly, 
as a body which countenances slavery. 

"Since there is not, and there never was, slavery 
in the territory inhabited by the Christian Fili- 
pinos, which is the part of the Islands subject to 
the legislative control of the Assembly, this House 
has refused to concur in the anti-slavery bill passed 
by the Philippine Commission. 



?5 



Palawan is one of the provinces "subject to the 
authority of the Philippine Assembly." It is pos- 
sible that Senor Quezon is so ignorant of conditions 
there as to be unaware of the indisputable fact that 
the Moros of that province held slaves until com- 
pelled to give them up by a provincial government 
carried on under the administrative control of an 
American Secretary of the Interior, but if so, he 

194 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

has no rightful claim to be a "Filipino familiar 
with the facts." 

Isabela is a province "subject to the authority 
of the Philippine Assembly." It differs from Pala- 
wan in that the large majority of its inhabitants 
are Christian Filipinos, and in the further fact that 
it is organized under the Provincial Government 
Act, and is therefore not in any way subject to the 
control of the Secretary of the Interior. 

Slavery has been common in this province from 
the beginning of historic times, and it is common 
there to-day. Its occurrence is admitted, and the 
conditions under which it prevails are described in a 
report by a fellow countryman of Senor Quezon, 
Sefior Francisco Dishoso, who was governor of the 
province when he made it on September 9, 1903. 

The history of this interesting and important 
document is briefly as follows: On April 28, 1903, 
the senior inspector of constabulary in Isabela 
wired the first district chief of constabulary, Ma- 
nila, that : 

"In this province it is a common practice to 
own slaves. These are bought by proprietarios 
(property owners. — D. C. W.) from Igorrotes and 
Calingas who steal same in distant places from 

195 



IN PORTS AFAR 

other tribes. Young boys and girls are bought at 
about 100 pesos, men 30 years old and old women 
cheaper. When bought, are generally christened 
and put to work on ranch or in house, and I think 
generally well treated. In this town a number sold 
within last few months, and as reported to me, 
Governor has bought three. Shall I investigate 
further.'^ Instructions desired. 

"(Signed) Sorenson." 

The further explanation of the Secretary of 
the Interior being "unpopular" may be found in 
the recommendation he made at the end of the fiscal 
year, June 30, 1912, as follows: 

"That for the adequate protection of the non- 
Christian tribes a final and earnest effort be made 
to secure the concurrence of the Philippine Assem- 
bly in the passage for the territory under the juris- 
diction of the Philippine Legislature of an Act 
identical with, or similar to. Act No. 2071, entitled, 
'An Act prohibiting slavery, involuntary servitude, 
peonage, and the sale or purchase of human be- 
ings in the Mountain Province and the Provinces 
of Nueva Viscaya and Agusan, and providing pun- 
ishment therefor, and that in the event of failure, 
the attention of Congress be called to this impor- 
tant matter to the end that it may pass adequate 

196 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

legislation if it deems such a course in the public 
interest." 

The bill was tabled by the Assembly on Janu- 
ary 8, 1913, and Secretary Worcester made his 
appeal to the Congress at Washington. The new 
governor-general in his first speech on arrival at 
Manila promised that the Filipinos were at once 
to be given a majority of the members of the In- 
sular Commission, and reports of the appointment 
of a new committee to ^^investigate" were again 
made. Meanwhile Congressional attention had been 
fixed upon this enormity, and the decisions of the 
Filipino courts were read by American lawyers. 

The decision in the Tomas Cabanag case is as 
follows : 

"The Congress of the United States has declared 
that human slavery shall not exist in these Islands, 
and while no law, so far as I can discover, has yet 
been passed either defining slavery in these Islands 
or affixing a punishment for those who engage in 
these inhuman practices as dealers, buyers, sellers, 
or derivers, the facts established in this case show 
conclusively that the child Jimaya was by the de- 
fendant forcibly and by fraud, deceit, and threats, 
unlawfully deprived of her liberty, and that his 
object and purpose was an unlawful and illegal 

197 



IN PORTS AFAR 

one, to wit, the sale of the child for money into 
human slavery. This constitutes the crime of 
illegal detention defined and penalized by article 
481 of the Penal Code, and this court finds the de- 
fendant guilty as charged in the information.' 



?5 



On appeal from the judgment of the court of 
first instance by the defendant, although it was 
conclusively shown that the child Jimaya had 
been forcibly taken from the possession of her 
grandmother Oltagon, who was exercising lawful 
and proper guardianship of the child, and that 
the child was sold to a certain Mareano Lopez, yet 
the appellate court held that the acts complained 
of did not constitute a crime and could not be prose- 
cuted within the realm of criminal law without an 
act of Legislature. The language of the court is 
herewith appended: 

"To sum up this case, there is no proof of slavery 
or even of involuntary servitude, inasmuch as it 
has not been clearly shown that the child has been 
disposed of against the will of her grandmother 
or has been taken altogether out of her control. 
If the facts in this respect be interpreted other- 
wise, there is no law^ applicable here, either of the 
United States or of the Archipelago, punishing 
slavery as a crime. The child was not physically 

198 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

confined or restrained so as to sustain a conviction 
for illegal detention, nor are the acts of the accused 
brought within any of the provisions of the law for 
the punishment of offenses against minors; conse- 
quently the conviction in this case must be reversed, 
in accordance with the recommendation of the at- 
torney-general, with costs de oficio^ and the pris- 
oner is acquitted." 

This decision allowed native judges in courts of 
the first instance all the latitude they required in 
order to conform to the wishes of the cacique. 

Then the great religious weeklies of the country 
began to speak; an article in the Christian Ad- 
vocate bearing upon the subject was sent direct to 
the President, and forthwith, to the great credit 
of the new Administration, the penal clauses were 
enacted by the Philippine Assembly. It was not 
self-government, rather it was government from 
Washington ; but it was a moral issue, upon which 
no one, much less the President, would hesitate for 
one moment. Perhaps the new governor-general, 
crediting as he does his appointment to Senor 
Quezon, could not do less than dismiss a man who 
would unhesitatingly blurt out the truth, even in 
the face of the Territorial representative, who be- 

199 



IN PORTS AFAR 

longs to the dominant party, and who is eager to 
be the head of the new RepubKc, in his opinion 
about to be estabhshed. That men of his class and 
character will control in any government estab- 
lished, is the tremendou-s and unassailable argument 
for maintaining the status quo. 

The existence of slavery and peonage for several 
centuries in the Islands is the greatest single prob- 
lem confronting the Government in its attempt to 
build up in the Islands a respectable and respon- 
sible electorate through whom responsible govern- 
ment may be established. The situation grows out 
of the ancient regime. Then the king, don, baron, 
cacique, or boss had the right to any and all kinds 
of service from his retainers. They tilled his fields, 
ran his errands, and submitted to his caprices in 
every particular. The degeneracy of this titular 
lord, and the deterioration of whole peoples thereby 
resulting, is too well known to the sociologists to 
need statement. This feudal lord persisted in the 
Philippines until the American occupation, has per- 
sisted since that time until now, without the con- 
sent or knowledge of the American people, and, 
unless the electorate are intelligent and persistent 
in their watch of Filipino events, is likely long to 

200 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

continue. Even with all the restraints of law a 
weak and degraded people, not knowing their 
rights, and powerless to enforce them against the 
customs and precedents of hundreds of years, would 
long remain enslaved in fact, if free in name. 

The multiplicity of cases requires an explana- 
tion. They are about as follows : A man in petty 
financial straits would borrow ten or fifteen pesos, 
giving as security for the repayment of the money 
his boy, more frequently his girl, age from twelve 
to sixteen years. The pawn changed residence and 
worked for the lender until the debt was paid. As 
is often the case in America, the debt increased 
rather than diminished. Perhaps the girl or girls 
disappeared. It happened that way often. That 
ended the obligation, and the debt was canceled. 
Or suppose it was a boy, and he ran away. 
Trumped-up charges of theft, larceny, or assault 
were filed against him, and over to Bilibid, the 
State's prison, he went, unless he was willing to 
return to work. There were a discreditable number 
of Filipino judges of the first instance who were 
ready to oblige a cacique in such a simple matter. 
The length to which these cases go is maddening. 
There is one where the poor Filipino was protected 

201 



IN PORTS AFAR 

by the laws passed by the Phihppine Commission 
for the non-Christian provinces. To evade this 
protection the poor fellow was baptized; the can- 
didate was willing to receive baptism in the hope 
that it would better his condition, and the owner 
arranged it on the supposition that the lack of 
law for the Christian provinces would hold after 
the slave was baptized. And it did avail until the 
appellate court ruled that the mere act of baptizing 
a provincial heathen did not cost him the protection 
of the law for the non-Christian provinces. 

The refusal of the Filipino Assembly four times 
to pass these bills is a sure index of the actual state 
of affairs. It is easy, therefore, to understand 
the solicitude with which men conversant with Fili- 
pino affairs view the granting of a majority in 
the Philippine Commission to the natives. The 
present Legislature consists of two Houses, an As- 
sembly of eighty-four Filipino members, represent- 
ing thirty-four provinces, and the Philippine Com- 
mission, an appointive body of nine members. Five 
of these latter have hitherto been Americans, all of 
whom, except the governor-general, have held ad- 
ministrative portfolios. The two Houses have equal 
power; either may initiate a bill, but affirmative 

202 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

action IS required by both in order to pass a bill. 
It is evident that before so vital a change was 
made there should have been a careful studv of 
the bills passed by the Assembly, and refused pas- 
sage by the Commission, and likewise the bills 
passed by the Commission and refused passage by 
the Assembly. The one passed by the Commission 
and four times refused passage by the Assembly 
concerning peonage and slavery has already been 
referred to. There are others emanating from the 
Assembly and refused passage by the Commission 
because they were dangerous, some even imperiling 
the stability and effectiveness of the Government. 

Then the original Act of Congress retained for 
the Commission exclusive authority over the non- 
Christian tribes, who had been the greatest sufferers 
by peonage and slavery. It was unquestionably 
the purpose of the Congress to keep the control of 
these more than a million unoffending, backward 
people in the hands of those who could be relied 
upon neither to exploit them nor to delay their 
progress to civilized equality. 

Heretofore it has been the policy to give these 
wild tribesmen and the poor Filipinos who make 
up the bulk of the population all possible aid in 

203 



IN PORTS AFAR 

securing homesteads and in the purchase of the 
small tracts with which they were satisfied. The 
policy of the Government has been to help all to 
become landholders. But the rich illustrados, or 
landholders, do not want this to occur. They pre- 
fer that these people should remain tenants on their 
large holdings, practically in a state of peonage. 
They have heretofore sought to mislead the people 
as to their rights, and have opposed them when they 
sought free homesteads. One of the first removals 
ordered by the new governor-general was that of 
Captain Sleeper, who had greatly interested him- 
self in instructing the poor and ignorant as to their 
rights, and assisting them to maintain those rights. 
By so doing the captain had made himself ex- 
tremely unpopular with the rich landholders, and 
his successor, a Filipino, will find it exceedingly 
hard to stand up against the pressure brought by 
these men. The Friar lands, which have been fre- 
quently mentioned in America, are under the con- 
trol of this same bureau, and, as in the case of the 
public lands, wealthy Filipinos wrongfully claim 
these lands and have repeatedly tried to prevent 
poor people from purchasing holdings therein, 
thus keeping them tenants on their own estates. 

204 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

These lands are plainly the best in the Islands. 
The Filipino appointed to this great office says he 
knows nothing about it, and every true friend of 
democracy must view with the gravest concern the 
placing of such a trust in the hands of a man 
avowedly ignorant of his duties. The office to 
which he has been appointed is the single barrier 
between a rich and autocratic land-holding class 
and millions of weak, poor, and ignorant Filipinos, 
whose efforts to improve their condition have been 
long viewed with disgust. Irreparable damage is 
sure to be inflicted upon the work of this bureau. 
The removals were strictly political, and on the 
authority of Dr. D. C. Worcester (we quote from 
him as reported in the Manila Cable News) : "I was 
informed that the governor-general had cabled 
Washington for advice as to how far he could go 
with removals without violating the letter of the 
Philippine service act. While en route to the 
Islands he gave out an Interview in which he stated 
in effect that for years he had seen Democrats 
badly treated as such, and took sardonic pleasure 
in now being able to accord similar treatment to 
the Republicans." Nothing seems to be wanting 
to justify the mot passed around to the effect that 

205 



IN PORTS AFAR 

"the day Tammany Hall lost control in New York 
City it acquired control in Manila." Hitherto the 
Philippine service has been remarkably free from 
such spoilsmen; nobody has stopped to inquire 
what were the politics of any governor-general or 
other official. Two of the governor-generals were 
Democrats, and the head of the bureau of education 
upon the arrival of the present governor-general 
was a Democrat. It is only proper that the gov- 
ernor-general should have men in the highest admin- 
istrative offices in full sympathy with his political 
views, but the removal of expert bureau chiefs, 
who are occupied with the efficient and economic 
performance of the work of the Government, will 
result in quick disaster. 

With the reductions of salaries affecting Ameri- 
cans, and the refusal to allow leave of absence, 
customary so as to allow the return of the em- 
ployees to America, we have little to say. The 
bureau of printing will illustrate the method of 
displacing men by salary reduction. This bureau 
had always been a matter of pride to the insular 
government. The director had from the outset used 
it as an opportunity for training the Filipinos, 
making it a great industrial school, and fitting 

206 



The statement in the last sentence on page 
207 is in error. At this date there are fifteen 
American Veterinarians on duty in the Islands. 




vv^r y,:fr<r, ••■;^-: 



•rvm^a^ mimmmmi 



^ 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

many young men for remunerative employment. 
Ninety-five per cent of those employed were Fili- 
pinos. With the arrival of the new governor- 
general rumors of sweeping reductions in salary 
became current, and some Americans entitled to 
promotion became alarmed, and after consulting 
the director sent a telegram to the President, pro- 
testing against such reduction, and without consult- 
ing the director sent another telegram to the presi- 
dent of the Assembly. For this the director was 
summarily removed. Nor can this be credited, as 
some try to assume, to the influence of the Roman 
Catholic Church. Father Algue, the famous di- 
rector of the Island weather bureau, appeared 
before the Upper Assembly and in an address 
characterized by dignity and force showed how 
destructive of efficiency and unfortunate in its ef- 
fects would be the adoption of the Assembly's pro- 
posals for sweeping salary reductions to the expert 
Americans employed by the Insular Government. 
Economy is always in order, but irresponsible 
slashing can continue only with serious danger. 
The last three American veterinarians have just 
left the Islands, and the fight against rinderpest 
is wholly in native control, 

207 



IN PORTS AFAR 

The recent Filipinization of the Manila streets 
is illustrative of the seething disorder in the leaders 
of the people. On a certain day at the meeting 
of the municipal board, Sr. Arellano introduced 
the following interesting and unique communica- 
tion to his fellow members: 

"I have the honor to submit to your considera- 
tion, in interpretation of the vehement desires of 
the Filipino people, in order to do honor to its 
illustrious men as an example to present and future 
generations, the changes of the names of the fol- 
lowing streets;" 

and following with the change of the names of 
eleven streets. The name given to one was that of 
a Filipino priest. Padre Burgos, who, in company 
with two others, was garroted by the Spaniards 
in 1872 ; another name assigned was that of Andres 
Bonifacio, the founder of the Ratipunan Society, 
while a third was that of General Luna, a leading 
figure after Aguinaldo in the insurrection, which 
cost so many American lives. The confusion oc- 
casioned by such lightning changes in a city like 
Manila may well be understood. It is indicative of 
the ferment going on in the minds of a mestizo 
people, not needing more government by the men 

208 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 

who have exploited them, but by those who will not 
be a party to their exploitation. It is 

**The cry of those ye humor. 
How slowly toward the light." 

It matters little who is the governor-general, but 
every time an earnest American is displaced, un- 
less there is a competent Filipino to take his place, 
whether the displacement comes through direct re- 
moval or by the reduction of his salary beyond the 
living rate, is aiding to rivet again those fetters 
of prejudice and ignorance upon which serfdom 
is based, and is serving to undo the work which 
America has undertaken in the Islands. Our 
American experience in what we are wont to call 
"reconstruction" should advise us that the men who 
enforce the law need to be looked to as well as 
the law itself. The Assembly has accomplished 
a late but great justice b}^ its penal clauses making 
effective the Fourteenth Amendment. As Bishop 
Oldham has said, "Custombre is the most power- 
ful and dominating word in the uneducated Fili- 
pino's vocabulary." The same is true of the Jefe 
and Ilustrado. They rely upon it to continue in- 
justice. Now to persuade these latter that such 
14 209 



IN PORTS AFAR 

practices are inhuman, and to abandon them, not 
because they are brutally forbidden by law, but 
because they freely elect to do them no longer; 
and to persuade the former that they act un- 
worthily when they consent to serve as peons and 
slaves, and that intelligence, self-support, and 
self-control are the sure steps to independence, is 
the romantic objective toward which the American 
occupation should strive. Until this appreciation 
of personal rights and interests is largely shared 
by all the people, and until the dangers inhering 
in further exploitation of the people is fully real- 
ized by the wealthier classes, the presence of more, 
not less, American teachers, bureau officials, clergy- 
men, and technical experts is needed in the Islands. 



210 



Chapter XIII 

FUNERAL, FEAST, AND FUNCTION 

fXlHE seven hundred thousand Igorrotes,Ifugaos, 
-■■ and related tribes in the Mountain Province 
of Luzon have made great progress since the Amer- 
ican occupation. War, pestilence, and famine — 
the three checks on growth of population — ^have 
been brought under practical control by the Amer- 
icans. These mountain natives are fitted for indus- 
trial control and agricultural occupations, and are 
the principal laborers for railroad construction. 
They are unique in their wearing apparel, funerals, 
and feasts. The G-string is simplicity of dress re- 
duced to a minimum, and but for the wild barbari- 
ties of feasts and funerals, might pass for economy 
and frugality on the part of these simple-hearted 
folk unskillful with needle and loom. 

Of course we attended the Annual Canyao — 
Igorrote for feast — given by the Country Club at 
Baguio, where four tribes vied in their dances; 
where rice and fish were served by kettles-full to 

211 



IN PORTS AFAR 

the natives, and salad and sandwiches to the army 
officers, educators, and civilians. They call that 
a canyao, adopting the native word; but after 
all it is an American social function, and not even 
a parody upon the genuine native feast. 

The Teachers'" Assembly Herald on the day of 
our arrival in Baguio recounted that the funeral 
of a distinguished Igorrote would soon occur, as 
his body had already been smoked for twenty-six 
days. He was a man of years and property. At 
least two of his grandsons are attending school in 
the United States. The body, which was to be in- 
terred, had on decease been elevated to a sitting 
position on a rude frame, some six feet high, and 
a slow fire to the degree of a smudge kept under- 
neath for almost four weeks. The body was dried, 
smoked, and shriveled, and ghastly and gruesome it 
awaited rude interment. Meanwhile the mourners 
ate the swine, goats, and dogs of the estate. Those 
who know what a funeral in Massachusetts or 
Pennsylvania was two hundred and fifty years ago, 
will speak with hesitation In calling it a barbarity 
in the mountain provinces of Luzon. Our own 
great-grandsires were those sepultured. 

Perhaps eight hours elapsed between the funeral 

212 



FUNERAL, FEAST, AND FUNCTION 

and the feast, and no doubt that a majority of 
those who feasted at the canyao had mourned at the 
funeral. Meanwhile our party — the second assist- 
ant of the bureau of education, who had assigned 
himself as guide and interpreter; a major in the 
constabulary, the professor of History in Columbia 
University, and his wife, with others — had visited 
a locally celebrated missionary school whose indus- 
trial work was on display and for sale at the Teach- 
ers' Conference camp. After fifteen kilometers of 
horseback riding we came, as the sun was rapidly 
sinking beyond the mountain to the ocean, to a 
tent pitched about 800 yards from the highway, 
about which an aggregation of swine, dogs, goats, 
and mourners from the funeral were gathered. We 
were offered hospitality in the form of rice-brewed 
beer, and the bureau of education representative 
lifted the flap of the tent and pulled out two men 
who were still in a stupor of inebriety following 
the funeral. They began to beat a tom-tom, mean- 
while keeping step to their own time moving in 
a circle. Then a woman with a baby whose feet 
were fastened in a belt at her waist, joined the 
movement. The canyao, it seems, was in celebra- 
tion of the baby having recovered from a sickness. 

213 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Then others joined until perhaps eight or ten par- 
ticipated in the dance. The din was increased by 
other tom-toms, shouts, and the crooning of songs. 
Then, as the revelry "waxed toward" a wassail, a 
sort of pulque was passed about, and the Americans 
contributed a peso each, approximately, for the 
festivities. There was perfect propriety in this, 
as the foreigners had come upon their own invi- 
tation. Then rose the squealing of a lean, razor- 
backed pig, which was half driven, half dragged 
by ropes fastened to the legs, ears, and snout into 
the charmed circle. Shoats of that height in Iowa 
would weigh 350 pounds. This of the mountain 
province could run like a thoroughbred, and 
scarcely weighed 120 pounds. The porker was 
tripped and securely pegged down on its right side. 
Then the master of ceremonies appeared with a 
bolo, a hammer, and a long, wire spike. With the 
bolo he dexterously cut two sides of a small square 
in the skin over the heart, and then flayed it, half 
ripping, half cutting it from the flesh beneath. 
Then he drove the spike through this flayed space 
into the heart of the pig, which continued to squeal 
even after the spike had reached its vitals. The 
flap of the skin was then deftly folded over the 

214 



« 




A Manila Sunset. 



FUNERAL, FEAST, AND FUNCTION 

wound after the spike was withdrawn, so that the 
cadaver might retain all the blood. The goat was 
to come next, and the dog, the chosen morsel, last. 
We did not care to see a like operation upon the 
dog ; a poor cur, suggestive of fleas, sorrel in color, 
and mangy; and left while the goat was being 
brought forward. We rode our ponies home in 
the gathering darkness, debating among ourselves 
the question of independence for such a primitive 
population. Either the Tagalogs would exploit 
them, sell many of them into slavery, or more likely 
those lithe and athletic tribesmen from the north 
and the Moros from the south would utterly over- 
whelm the Tagalogs, sacking Manila and making 
wassail along the Pasig, as Alaric the Goth and 
Attila the Hun reveled in the palaces of Aven- 
tinus. 

It is with some trepidation that we nominate the 
great international outpouring of men and women 
of all nationalities and conditions on the day of 
prayer for China as a "function." It was a 
strange prayer-meeting, and we doubt if in all the 
circle of the sun elsewhere as large, animated, and 
cosmopolitan an assembly waited upon the Deity in 
prayer and felicitation over the new Republic. The 

215 



IN PORTS AFAR 

news by the Associated Press despatches preferring 
the request of the Chinese cabinet for the prayers 
of all Christians in the Ancient Empire for the suc- 
cess and perpetuity of the new order occasioned 
great interest. Bishop William Perry Eveland, 
showing the true elements of leadership, at once 
called upon Governor-General Forbes and Major- 
General Bell of the army, pointing out the oppor- 
tunity for a great civic-religious gathering in the 
Greek Auditorium, Camp John Hay. Major- 
General Bell, who is diplomatist, publicist, and mili- 
tary genius combined, at once took the burden of 
arrangements, sent for the Chinese Consul-General, 
forwarded personal invitations by orderlies to the 
department heads, instructed Chaplain Smith from 
Corregidor to be present, ordered out the regi- 
mental bands, invited Bishop William Perry Eve- 
land to preside, Governor-General Forbes to in- 
troduce him, and with military directness assigned 
Dr. Geo. William Wright and this writer for "re- 
marks," not forgetting a friendly nod to the Chi- 
nese, who were servants about the camp to the num- 
ber of sixty, to whom he assigned seats on the plat- 
form. 

The Sabbath afternoon dawned in beautiful 

216 



FUNERAL, FEAST, AND FUNCTION 

Baguio splendor. The seats were crowded; the 
colonels and majors were out in full force — 

"Great is vermilion splashed with gold." 

Eighty Igorrote girls from Mrs. Kelly's School 
grouped themselves on the outer rim of seats, and 
civilians by the hundred filled the vacant spaces, 
standing to hear the Scriptures, prayers, and ad- 
dresses. The spirit of the occasion left nothing to 
be desired. One found himself wishing that some 
clergymen who dawdle and drone through an un- 
limitable list of services, notices, and preliminary 
"remarks" could serve as chaplain in one of the 
Island regiments long enough to learn the value of 
precision, penetration, and terminal facilities. 
General Bell himself was drafted by Bishop Eve- 
land for the concluding word, alluding to Bret 
Harte's personal explanation that he wrote the 
poem 

"For ways that are dark and for tricks that are vain 
The heathen Chinee is peculiar," 

without any thought that it really represented the 
Chinese, and voiced his often expressed regret at 
the inapplicable though friendly lines. 

217 



IN PORTS AFAR 

Dr. Wright spoke on the unifying and clarifying 
energy of prayer, and concluded his deeply spir- 
itual address with the lines of Tennyson: 

*'For thus the whole round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

There are two great events happening within the 
lifetime of the new generation which have served 
to cement the friendship of China and the United 
States. The first was the appointment of Anson 
Burlingame as minister to China in 1861, and 
the treatj^ which he afterwards negotiated with the 
United States as plenipotentiary of China. By 
this treaty China first claimed the right and as- 
sumed the responsibility of a nation according to 
the standards of international law. 

The other event was the maintenance inviolate of 
Chinese territory following the Boxer uprising, 
largely due to the diplomatic representations of 
Secretary of State John Hay and the return to 
the impoverished Chinese treasury of the balance of 
the Chinese indemnity not used in liquidating bona 
'fide American claims for damages arising out of 
the insurrection. This exhibition of honor and 
good faith served to give wide publicity to the 

218 



FUNERAL, FEAST, AND FUNCTION 

rapacity of other nations, and deepened the respect 
and esteem in which the United States was held by 
the Chinese Government. Then, coincident with 
increasing intercommunication, the growth of the 
press, the spread of the Enghsh language, and the 
rising tide of democracy came the proclamation 
of the Chinese Republic and the appeal for the 
prayers of its own Christian citizens. Whatever 
the motive, whether diplomatic or religious, in- 
spiring the request, it must take final rank as of 
great moment. Men are bound in friendship to 
those for whom they pray, and rally to the support 
of those in whose interest they besiege the throne 
of grace. 

*'Yes, pray for Him thou lovest, if uncounted wealth were 

thine: 
The treasures of the mighty deep, the riches of the 

mine; 
Thou couldst not to a faithful friend a dearer gift impart 
Than the earnest consecration of a deeply prayerful 

heart." 

It was altogether appropriate that such an ap- 
peal should be made to the loyalty of large num- 
bers of its citizens who by the profession of Chris- 
tianity had conformed to Western language, law, 
and religion, and by their very habit of life were 

219 



IN PORTS AFAR 

pledging themselves to the practice of equality. 
But quite as basic was the appeal that Christianity 
makes to the strongest races — to the men who have 
force and courage in their blood. A weak race de- 
bases Christianity, and can not stand up under its 
hard duties. But because the Chinese are a sturdy 
race they must have a strong faith. They are a 
hardy stock, greatly differing from the Oriental 
populations west and south of China, or from the 
Malays in Japan and the Philippines. The same 
open door that let the nations into China let them 
out, and they have gone everywhere on earth. 
The Chinese live under the equator like a Malay, 
and bear snowstorm and zero weather like a Ca- 
nadian or a Cossack. Only America can save the 
Philippines from him. He already monopolizes the 
business of the Islands. The quality of his man- 
hood and the fiber of his character may be sug- 
gested by an allusion to his history. Of the na- 
tions that filled great place in the ancient world, 
but two remain. The Hebrew, oldest branch of 
the Semitic stock, still preserves his name and mem- 
ory, though land and temple were torn from him 
in 70 A. D. But China is the same old China of 
five millienniums. He occupies in our day the same 

220 



FUNERAL, FEAST, AND FUNCTION 

soil where for one hundred and sixty generations 
the Chinese have lived and died. From this soil 
great migrations poured out, led by men like 
Tamerlane and Ghengis Khan. The fate of every 
other nation has not passed upon China, and now 
this "graybeard" has not only adopted Western 
civilization, with its steam engines, electric lights, 
and wireless telegraphy, but has cut off its queues, 
abolished the Manchu monarchy, and adopted a 
republic. 

Intellectually the Chinese are as striking as they 
are physically and historically commanding. His 
syllogism is efficient, and he submits its fundamen- 
tal to scientific verification. He comes slowly to 
his conclusions, but once reached, they are the same 
to which any logician would come, given the same 
premises. The mariner's compass, gunpowder, and 
the art of printing are ancient with him. Real 
world-progress is impossible without every nation's 
participation. Christianity can not be safe in Asia 
or in the world with such a mass unleavened as that 
warren of unnumbered millions, seething like a cal- 
dron, effervescing like fermenting yeast, and run- 
ning over on the edges like a huge pan of dough. 

It is a modern wonder of the world, irresistibly 



IN PORTS AFAR 

novel, that China, the ancient of days, has come 
to the penitent form and asked for "prayers." 
Now, while he is in the enthusiasm and faith of 
his modern youth, yet tender to impressions, and 
plastic to a master's hand, our Island Americans, 
his nearest neighbors, whose methods and ideals he 
strives to attain with imitative exactness, met and 
spoke hopefully of his new government, and flung 
out the banner of his new republic. The solemn 
hush of prayer, the moving panorama of soldiers 
and civilians, the beat of bands, and the deep notes 
of thousands of human voices, with the Mongolian 
faces that filled the platform of the Greek Theater 
at Baguio, will long remain to those who saw it, 
one of the most magnetic visions that set the soul 
into a subtle yearning for America, for China, and 
for the Kingdom of God. 



222 



Chapter XIV 
THE MODERN ANTONY 

SHAKESPEARE saw in Mark Antony the 
Roman Empire corrupted by the sensual, 
enervating, and luxurious East. Insidious as the 
rust which gnaws through the steel keel of a war- 
ship, as corrosive as the saline particles which make 
a desert, as the ants which eat out the heart of a 
library, the great virtues of Antony — work, cour- 
age, faith, and honor — were eaten out by sensu- 
ality and the indolence, gluttony, and drunkenness 
that are so often in fact associated with it. Cleo- 
patra, the woman, makes his life the quintessence of 
tragedy. The "Vampire," by Kipling, has a touch 
of hysteria, which saves women from taking it too 
much to heart; "Becky Sharp," by Thackeray, is 
a great achievement in satire; but the recital of 
Cleopatra's influence over Antony, as though 
Shakespeare had a sense of personal pain, and as 
though Cleopatra were the woman of the sonnets, 
makes it the bitterest thing ever written by man 

223 



IN PORTS AFAR 

against woman. All recrimination between the 
sexes must be one-sided, and yet that does not break 
the murderous force of this arraignment. You can 
not study Antony too often; his is a poison-story 
like "Macbeth." Lust infected the veins of the 
princely Antony, and he became bloated and gan- 
grened; like Hamlet, he resolves and re-resolves, 
and, like Samson, is doomed to betrayal and self- 
destruction. 

Cleopatra in the drama represents the Orient, 
and in modern life specifies the cities and colonies 
where, without the restraints of home, publicity, and 
religion, men meet the assaults upon their purity, 
thrust upon each in turn from the beginning of 
time. In Shakespeare's play, as in the actual 
chronicle, there is luxury and an oozing plethora 
of food, drink, and equipage; the banquets would 
bankrupt a province. In modern fact the for- 
eigners, who, like Grill in the bower of Acrasia 
''Serves his brutish ways," are comparatively rich, 
while the woman is poor. In everything else the 
parallel is perfect. Antony throwing away his 
empire at the command of a Circe, is a present-day 
tragedy and, like the Book of Proverbs, will bear 
study by men of affairs, statesmen, and educators. 

224 



THE MODERN ANTONY 

The tragedy Is still on the boards in Algiers, 
Egypt, India, the Malay Peninsula, Java, and the 
Philippines. Perhaps it would be better to say that 
it always goes on where superior races touch the 
near primitive. Only in Germany, England, and 
the United States is the traffic in girls put under 
the ban of law. 

Whatever low wages may have to do with vice 
in America, the dreadful poverty of the heathen 
world makes the strange woman, if less attractive, 
less abhorrent. Here women are thrown to the 
young whelps who have inherited money from lions 
or have grabbed it in the wild forays of commerce 
and the stock exchange. There, like cats lean and 
hungry, they hunt men. 

The attempt of the ancient Hebrews to keep 
their blood clean and unmixed is well known. 
Again and again Israel was warned not to miarry 
with the people of the lands they were to conquer, 
but to utterly drive out the inhabitants. As they 
were not to marry with them, they were not to 
eat with them. They were trying to keep the 
strain of blood from Abraham clear for the Mes- 
siah, is the one explanation given, but in fact it 
is the earliest recorded protest against that ferine 
15 225 



IN PORTS AFAR 

passion which is evidenced by the Eurasian in India, 
by the Mestizo of China and the Philippines, and 
the Mulatto of our own country. It makes civiliza- 
tion blush for its latent savagery. The caste- 
system in India, though now largely industrial, 
must have been influenced largely in its early de- 
velopment by these same conditions and by the con- 
sequent deterioration of its progeny. The preser- 
vation of the Jewish stock as a present racial entity 
is rooted in the commandments of the old law, dis- 
obeyed by individuals, but in the main observed to 
the perpetuation of long family lines and enduring 
national life. The ancient royal families, like the 
modern aristocracies, were slow to learn the validity 
and obligation of the seventh commandment. 

The Dutch, among modern colonizers, have been 
the worst offenders in the way of lust, though the 
French and Spanish have little in their record that 
does not need to be excused. Even the English 
seem to condone it in the Army officers, and the 
great trading corporations recommend a "contract 
girl" to their civilian employees in the Orient, on 
the supposition that it conduces to a longer term 
of service. Church and school have likewise suf- 
fered, and Christianity now would be really, not 

226 



THE MODERN ANTONY 

nominally, triumphant In all the East but for this 
bestial fever. There is less to choose between the 
illicit and the marriage "contract" than is com- 
monly supposed. On its face the latter seems every 
way better, but the quarrels, separations, abandon- 
ments, and general scandal which the marriage of 
the American and the native, even in the Philip- 
pines, occasions leaves much to be desired. The 
practice of buying a new girl every year is quite 
common among both the English and the French, 
and one American in Hong Kong said he bought 
a new one every year, so that he would become at- 
tached to none, and that he liberally supported 
his children, paying fifty cents gold per week to 
the mother of each for the support of the child. 

By comparison the Americans have done exceed- 
ingly well. The great percentage of our men prove 
by their bearing and habit of life the honor and 
self-control that are the patents of democracy and 
the proofs of independence. The American army 
ofBcers, in spite of occasional lapses, honor their 
country. From the highest rank to the newest en- 
listed man no one has "pull" enough to flaunt de- 
cency in the face, and hope to maintain his rank 
and standing. Court-martial is certain if moral 

227 



IN PORTS AFAR 

delinquencies come to public knowledge. Resig- 
nation from the service or prompt defense and full 
exoneration or immediate dismissal are the order 
of the day. The American teachers are alike credit- 
able. Some under forms of marriage and some 
doubtless in illicit ways as well, are a reproach to 
the mothers who bore them and the homeland. But 
the Bureau of education is as jealous for the Amer- 
ican good name as is the army, and on looking 
over a list of promotions in the bureau, made by 
the late Frank R. White, director of education, 
no teacher was included who had married a Filipino 
woman or with whose good name the tongue of 
scandal had been properly busy. It may have 
seemed a hardship in some cases, but such a handi- 
cap ought to be borne by any man contracting 
such a union, formed almost certainly without 
knowledge on the part of the woman of her aban- 
donmient or divorce at the termination of her hus- 
band's term of Philippine service. One American 
thus married and divorced was at Baguio, where 
the Teachers' Assembly is held. He is protected 
by the civil service laws, but his- resignation, though 
not formally requested, would find immediate ac- 
ceptance. The same circumspect life is common 

228 



THE MODERN ANTONY 

among the subordinates of the Philippine Commis- 
sion, and it is without doubt the cleanest, most de- 
cent body of men engaged in the foreign service of 
any nationality. 

The Spanish, French, and Italian decadence is 
too well known to need statement or comment. De- 
generacy is never a pleasing theme, though Jack 
London made the decline and fall of a dog the 
subject of a very attractive book; but that was a 
reversion to type or, as Darwin would call it, "The 
Survival of the Fittest." But degeneracy has no 
outcome, and is therefore avoided. The late Lord 
Salisbury called Spain a "decadent nation," and 
the way the noble Dons made faces and shrilled 
their denials showed that the shot had gone home. 
The physical rottenness of the Spanish nobility, 
and the excesses of the dons, padres, and caciques 
in the Philippines have practically made large seg- 
ments of the Island peoples a mestizo breed. In 
"The Call of the Wild" we have the story of a 
dog stolen by Manuel, the man of all work about 
the house, who had played the races and lost, sold 
to a dog buyer. He is throttled by a saloon bum, 
beaten by an express messenger, and finally reaches 
a place in an Alaskan mail team. There he fights, 

229 



IN PORTS AFAR 

steals, adjusts himself to untoward conditions, and 
ultimately comes to headship in a pack of wolves, 
and the Newfoundland strength and shepherd cun- 
ning he had from) his forbears come to be infiltrated 
into a snarling, yelping pack under the Arctic 
circle, who thus become the fittest to survive. But 
the dog who thus goes to his own would be slan- 
dered by any comparison with those who walk on 
two legs among the poverty-stricken women of 
alien peoples and, because they are tall and of a 
goodly countenance, speak one of the European 
languages, and are thus associated with the pure 
and austere morals of the Christians, have oppor- 
tunity to ruin them by scores. Gibbon and London 
are gentlemen by comparison. Madam de Stael 
must have known this type of brute when she re- 
marked, "The more I know of men, the better I 
think of dogs." 

Apparently there is no public opinion in the East. 
It can readily be understood why the missionaries 
by their very calling would be estopped from 
openly challenging the insidious vices of their fel- 
low foreigners. These offending officers and civil- 
ians are often the one link binding them to home, 
and hospitalities, fellowships, and com(mon interests, 

230 



THE MODERN ANTONY 

as well as evangelizing duty, seem to require that 
they shall not constitute themselves public chal- 
lengers and monitors of their countrymen. So it 
comes about that the English and French have been 
illicit in India, China, and Japan for one hundred 
and fifty years, and honored at home. Financial 
misconduct, though occurring on the other side of 
the world, is frowned upon and is a sure bar to 
social happiness in either London or Paris. The 
Newcomes suggest the aversion and ostracism 
which doubtful monetary conduct entails. Now, if 
public opinion could be induced to visit like punish- 
ment upon moral obliquity, it would at once lose 
much of its present shamelessness and decrease 
quantitatively both as fact and example. Press 
associations, news cables, steamship lines, and the 
critics which the Germans in China and the Ameri- 
cans in the Philippines naturally become, make pub- 
licity easier and infinitely more effective. No laws 
yet devised are so repressive as the certainty of 
publicity, and a public opinion that will reprobate 
as vulgar and criminal the seduction and betrayal 
of foreign women, whether illicit or under forms 
of contract marriage, would instantly reduce it to 
a minimum. 

231 



IN PORTS AFAR 

The Philippine Assembly, after four times re- 
fusing, has just penalized the barter and sale of 
slaves and the practice of peonage. The Mann act 
ought to be extended to the Islands. It took 
the report of the Secretary of Interior for the Phil- 
ippine Island Commission to rouse Amjerica to its 
importance, and though the secretary was dis- 
missed and a new Congressional committee ap- 
pointed to investigate, and the Filipinos given a 
majority on the commission, the penal clauses were 
enacted. It is fortunate that President Wilson, 
to whom the country looks for moral leadership, 
whether by concession or by private order, secured 
this penalizing advance. Happily the American 
people are not compelled to add to the fight against 
the saloon and political Mormonism a new crusade 
against slavery in the Philippines. 

But the men charged with executive responsi- 
bility in any foreign country will need courage 
and constancy. This is quite as true in the Phil- 
ippines. If American teachers, civilians, army and 
navy officers can not altogether be disrated for 
flagrant vice, at least it should be emphatically 
known that promotion ceases in cases of separation 
from or abandonment of Filipino wives. More- 

232 



THE MODERN ANTONY 

over, offenses by either officers or clergy, instead of 
being merely whispered about, should be brought 
to the attention of governmental or ecclesiastical 
superiors. That will prove that the underlying 
purpose is decency, and not scandal, and further 
responsibility would be located. It will also con- 
strain offenders to deport themselves more repu- 
tably or be brought up with a sharp turn, either 
by authority or by public opinion. Democracy 
creates new wants, calls for better homes, demands 
schools, and excites its individuals to revolt against 
filth, squalor, ignorance, and stirs discontent in 
body, mind, and spirit until they are elevated and 
disenthralled. Executives more frequently than 
statutes fail to give the public protection. The 
study of laws, the declaration of their sphere, and 
the proclamation of their influence rest upon ad- 
ministrators, whether in Church or State. To 
them, men cognizant of mioral turpitude should 
make their definite complaint. 

We are particularly jealous for the Philippines, 
where the United States, confessedly a Protes- 
tant power of the first magnitude, is in the crucible 
of a great experiment. The Anglo-Saxon and his 
language is again associated in the mind of Oriental 

233 



IN PORTS AFAR 

peoples with science and democracy. The Ameri- 
can is subject to no religious superstitions, supple 
to no aristocracy, nor will he suffer exploitation by 
any special interest. His conduct can give the 
single and sufficient answer to all Mohammedanism 
and paganism, namely: that he touched the East, 
and was not contaminated by it. The moral turpi- 
tude of the Philippine Assembly will sooner or later 
daA\Ti upon the Amierican people, and then statutes 
as broad as the Mann act will be established in the 
interest of labor and morality. 

Perhaps it is only subjective optimism that helps 
us to rise from a perusal of Antony and Cleopatra, 
or from a dissertation on the modern Antony, feel- 
ing that the world is growing better. It would 
be impertinent to argue moral progress from ma- 
terial changes and betterments. Some things give 
us pause; for example, we shall all agree that 
Antony is high-souled by comparison with the 
modern "cadet." Tales that come to us with almost 
certain proof fromj the days of American slavery 
equal any dereliction reported of the most debased 
of our countrymen abroad. 

We are none too hopeful about courses of in- 
struction in sex hygiene. The intellectual side is 

234 



THE MODERN ANTONY 

presented clearly, definitely, and with sufficient de- 
tail, but the ethical elements are vague and lack 
courage. The main effect is information, and not 
virtue. Knowledge is not moral power. It must 
be expected, as never before, that the home will 
teach children eugenics without concentrating at- 
tention upon sex details. The new education, which 
must begin in the home, must be morally earnest 
and ^Hrain the children's character ; teach them that 
purity is noble and possible; that vice is vile, and 
carries with it punishment; that marriage is in- 
violable, and that the family is sacred." It must 
be continued in the denominational colleges, and it 
should become the objective of many prayer-meet- 
ings among boys and young men now carried on 
by the Young Men's Christian Association. Med- 
ical men who sound the warnings of disease are to 
be encouraged. They answer with increasing acu- 
men the horrid sneer of Mephistopheles, that "man 
used his reason to become more bestial than the 
beast." Segregation for venereal diseases, as for 
smallpox and tuberculosis, is to be justified and 
anticipated with the progress of civilization. 



235 



Chapter XV 

AMERICA AND JAPAN 

"PAIFFERENT explanations are made for the 
^^ sudden change of American public opinion 
toward Japan. No one questions the fact. Cali- 
fornia gets credit for raising the issue, and every 
"leading writer'' has his own theory for the veer- 
ing of public sentiment, that a few short years ago 
was so appreciative and laudatory. The gallant 
fight of little Japan against Russia carried Ameri- 
can sympathy with it ; the precision, skill, and suc- 
cess of the little brown mi'en received unstinted ad- 
miration, and the self-restraint and good judgment 
shown in the conclusion of the Portsmouth treaty 
helped to confirm the world's high estimate that 
they were men of peace driven to war, and that 
they were as skillful in council as they were valiant 
in arms. To assume that race-prejudice has occa- 
sioned the change or to charge it to the wish of 
California to have servility and inferiority in its 
immigrants, can not be seriously urged; yet no 

236 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

less a publicist than one of the editors of the 
Outlook credits it to race-prejudice and says: 

"The Japanese have never been servile; that is 
the secret of the dislike for them felt by Western 
peoples, accustomed to treat the Oriental as if he 
were outside the protection of law." 

The insignificant number of Japanese settled in 
California, actually decreased within the last two 
years, shows that no racial issue of importance 
really exists. "Baron Chinda's Menace at Wash- 
ington," "Tokyo Jingoes," "Irresponsible Japa- 
nese War- Talk," also come in for enumeration. 
From, a recent weekly we quote a rather able and 
illuminating paragraph : 

"The situation is rendered more serious by the 
impossibility of expecting Japan to accept any 
scheme of compromise to save 'face' as she did in 
the case of the San Francisco school question. The 
Tokyo foreign office has never been forgiven by 
the public for accepting this humiliation; and it 
is strongly felt now that all such deference to race- 
prejudice never permanently adjusts the difficulty, 
but only puts off the evil day. Japan has now 
reached a position in the family of nations where 
she feels she must take a firm stand for equal treat- 

237 



IN PORTS AFAR 

ment or be relegated again to the position of a 
second-class power." 

This is entirely wide of the mark, for one Ameri- 
can at least, and we suspect it is for most Ameri- 
cans. Let m|e testify to the reasons that caused 
my own change of front. We were just leaving 
India when we heard of the decision of the Japa- 
nese Appellate Court releasing 99 of the 105 Ko- 
rean Christians convicted for the attempted assassi- 
nation of the Governor-General of Korea. Be- 
ginning with that announcement, we frequently 
heard the Associated Press reprobated, and the 
veiled reference to the unreliability of that great 
news agency was illustrated by the denials oft re- 
peated that "there was no torture" of prisoners. 
We thought it only the jealousy of rivals. Then 
we learned that there had been no attempt to 
assassinate the official in question, and that it was 
a "frame-up" to give some slight justification for 
the faithlessness the Japanese foreign office had 
shown in its promise to maintain Korean independ- 
ence. In Manila, before the California Legislature 
really showed any inclination to settle out of hand 
a question 98 per cent national, we were told again 
and again that the Japanese were cruel, that they 

238 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

had veneered over their innate habit of overriding 
the rights of the weak and the lowly, that they 
were truly Malay, and that proof of their national 
honor would need to wait on refusing to torture 
prisoners to secure a confession, and afterwards 
convicting suspects on testimony so obtained, and 
that the Japanese judiciary were plainly under the 
domination of the Tokyo Government. This was 
unsettling, to say the least. Then in Japan we saw 
cartoons appearing in the Japanese papers against 
Christianity and America, heard the open statement 
that "the only way to make the Japanese tell the 
truth is to torture them," and four weeks in the 
company of men who had sat at the trial of the poor 
Koreans in whose good faith no less than eight dif- 
ferent denominations put implicit trust, completed 
my own change of attitude. Either my impression- 
ableness to public opinion or these facts about the 
Japanese themselves, have compelled me to feel that 
there is a world-wide repudiation of the Japanese 
State's claim to civilized social equality based upon 
the barbaric and mediaeval practices of torture and 
of a judiciary subservient to political influence. 

Now, equality mlay relate to many diff*erent 
things; just as there is a flesh man, a muscle man, 

239 



IN PORTS AFAR 

a skeleton man, a venous man, a' nerve man, and 
so on for twenty-six different specifications, 
equality may be of the material, may relate to 
capacity for self-government or to social accept- 
ance. The first, the question of economic equality, 
is really no question at all, and what is worth the 
while is for the political economist, who may won- 
der at the tremendous taxes that the Japanese en- 
dure. The second is continually asserted to be true 
of several South American countries by the coun- 
tries themselves, in the public eye at thie present 
time, notably Mexico. As to the latter, any woman 
can tell us that the only way to get social recog- 
nition is to behave yourself, keep your house spick 
and span, and besides do something that is worth 
while for the world or for the social set to which 
you belong. But as to this last and perhaps the 
most debated "equality," be it remembered that 
there is a national "four hundred" and likewise 
an international Mrs. Grundy. Now, it would 
seem that Uncle Sam introduced the new social 
aspirant, and saw that several of his good friends 
at the club "left cards." But Mrs. Grundy has 
quietly told it about that the Jap aforesaid is a 
"bounder," that his manners are execrable, that 

MO 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

he tortures prisoners and does not pay his gam- 
bling debts, and that, while he may call at the 
office, the invitations to the soiree are limited in 
number, and that the Jap is a Malay anyway. 
Moreover, some friend should tell him that he 
makes the impression of a before-the-war overseer, 
who spent his timie trying to break into the social 
round carried on up at the big plantation house. 
We are told again and again that he is sensitive. 
Goodness knows he needs to be. It is probably too 
early in the history of diplomacy to expect am- 
bassadors to tell the plain, unvarnished truth; 
rather the formula is that of Immanuel Kant, who 
delimited the prevaricatory frontier by saying that, 
while he was determined never to falsify, he was de- 
termined not to tell uncalled-for truths. But the 
Tokyo Government may abate its talk about 
"honor" and may expect suspicion of its declared 
intentions while the treachery of the Korean an- 
nexation is so widely known by men living. They 
clearly meditate the annexation of a portion of 
Manchuria on the same terms. Let it be granted 
that Korea is better off under Japanese rule. That 
Is not the issue. The question before the meeting is 
Japanese honor; Japan promised Russia, her ar- 
^^ 241 



IN PORTS AFAR 

mies being in the field, and the United States, who 
has done so much to secure the new nation welcome 
at its world council board, to "respect the integrity 
of Korea." She did not; therefore, as a plain 
American, my attitude is changed. Baron Chinda, 
Japanese Ambassador at Washington, called at the 
Department of State and told Secretary Bryan that 
a certain Baron Yun (one of the Koreans who had 
not been released with the ninety-nine convicted 
of attempting to assassinate the Governor-General 
of Korea) was not in prison, but was out on bail. 
Secretary Bryan believed it; a missionary of the 
Church South is reported to have spent a week's 
salary cabling Washington, "The Japanese am- 
bassador is mistaken." Now, wliat is a self-respect- 
ing Secretary of State to do? Baron Chinda grad- 
uated at De Pauw University, and undoubtedly re- 
ported what the Japanese foreign office advised him 
to announce. The Governor-General of Korea told 
a comtmittee of missionaries "that the torture of 
prisoners is against the law, and there has been 
no torture." They believed him, doubted their 
own brethren, the evidence of their own senses, and 
eyed askance the plucky Southerner who precipi- 
tated the world knowledge of the enormity by 

242 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

hiring a lawyer to defend his members and prove 
the governor-general "mistaken." My theory is 
that Japan has been arraigned before the tribunal 
of public opinion, and just as sundry nations have 
been visiting displeasure upon the Russian grand 
dukes because of their infamous treatment of the 
Jews, so Japan is under sentence to wait at the 
lodge door until some word is returned before it 
is raised to the sublime degree or takes any new 
solemn affirmation at the altar of mystery. 

But let us get to the trial. The whole East fol- 
lowed it with absorbing interest. From Calcutta 
to Manila, with shore leave at Rangoon, Penang, 
Singapore, Hong Kong, and from Manila to Yoko- 
hama, off again at Hong Kong and Shanghai, we 
read carefully, inquired intelligently, and became 
breathlessly interested in the fate of the other six. 
It was cruel beyond expression for the poor Korean 
Christians, but unfortunate to the point of tragedy 
for the reversal of opinion toward Japan by the 
civilized world. Incidentally the Associated Press 
suffered immensely in pubUc confidence; the par- 
ticular representative of the Press was "decorated'' 
by the Mikado, and that of itself suggests that the 
new Island empire has gone to school to Machia- 

24S 



IN PORTS AFAR 

velli ; one wonders what it was that caused the New 
York Herald to withdraw its accusation against the 
Associated Press — pressure or threat to discontinue 
the news service, probably, though that would 
hardly seem sufScient for a change of front by 
the great organ of James Gordon Bennett. The 
judge who presided at the trial was plainly taking 
orders from Tokyo. The judge was in a way sub- 
ordinate, and the Associated Press representative 
was dismissed. 

The Koreans are devotedly patriotic. The Ko- 
rean court was divided; several factions trying to 
gain and keep the favor of the prince, born to 
rule without inheriting the capacity to carry his 
country through troublous times. Japan's cam- 
paign against Russia was carried on with Korea as 
a base, but under pledge to the United States to 
respect the independence, renewed later to both 
the Utiited States and Russia. Then came the an- 
nexation, with nation-wide discontent, and pre- 
cisely the conditions for exciting insurrection and 
assassination. Then the Marquis of Ito was assas- 
sinated in Manchuria by a Korean. The Japanese, 
knowing that their own treachery was an incite- 
ment to insurgency, jumped to the conclusion that 

244 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

some one was conspiring against the Governor- 
General of Korea. Their fears and conscience were 
the basis of their suspicion, and the police got busy 
to locate the criminals. They arrested 125 Chris- 
tians, probably because they attended regular 
prayer-meetings, which the Japanese in their po- 
litical trespass could not understand. 

A police inspector, Kinutomo by name, with an 
interpreter and a clerk to record their confessions, 
took these 125 in hand, strung themi up by their 
thumbs, burned the soles of their feet, seared them 
with red-hot irons, placed them in half standing 
and half sitting positions, and in seventy-two dif- 
ferent, horrible, savage, and brutal ways, for 
twenty, thirty, or forty days, as was necessary, tor- 
tured them until they cried out anything they were 
told to say. Dozens of them were sent to the 
hospitals to be treated for their wounds ; two died ; 
and the stories having been secured, they were sent 
before the prosecuting attorney to repeat the story. 
There they disowned their confessions, saying that 
they were secured under torture, and forthwith were 
sent back to the police inspector, who applied the 
same tortures and told them frankly that if they 
came back again, and remained recalcitrant, he 

245 



IN PORTS AFAR 

would kill them. One Christian, of such high de- 
gree that they did not dare to apply physical tor- 
ture, was compelled to listen for thirty days to the 
dreadful procedure until he came to believe that, 
with such a heavy hand upon his less financially 
and socially important brethren, he would bet- 
ter keep still than to continue the terror by telling 
the facts. Imagine yourself shut up with Kinu- 
tomo, his clerk interpreter, and the instruments of 
torture at hand. You state that you never par- 
ticipated in an attempt upon the life of the gov- 
ernor-general, that you never heard any of your 
brethren propose it, nor was it discussed at any of 
the prayer-meetings or business meetings of the 
Church you attended. Then this inquisitor gives 
you his full program ; on the fortieth day you are 
still alive, and you say to him, "Hitherto I have 
told you the truth, but hereafter I shall answer 
as you wish." He asks you who was at a certain 
meeting ; you tell him who were there. Then, with 
a tweak of his deadly iron or rope or fire, he says, 
"Such a man" (naming him) "was there.'^" and you 
say, "Yes." "How many revolvers did they dis- 
tribute.?" You say, "Two hundred." "No ; that is 
too many." Then you change the answer to five. 

246 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

"That is too few." "Well, then, twenty-seven." 
"Very good." And so through the details of a 
"frame-up" involving men, place, and events as 
remote from fact as could be the participation of 
readers of this chapter. It continues for one hun- 
dred and twenty days. After hearing the details 
from men who heard the recital in court, their own 
faces wet with tears as they told it, and my own 
heart burning with mob violence mjeanwhile, you 
may understand that in my thought Kinutomo and 
Torquemada are in the same class. 

In the court of first instance these confessions 
were assumed to be true, and even in the appellate 
judicature the court refused to call the doctors and 
nurses who had attended the sufferers to testify to 
their wounds and agony, while the chief of police, 
sword in hand, stood glowering and glaring at the 
prisoners, trying to keep back the flood of testi- 
mony against the police enormities that would out. 
It is useless to fill up pages with details or argue 
that such things could remain unknown, and that 
the judge and the Associated Press representative 
did not know. The record would have been dis- 
graceful in the tenth century of the Christian era. 
It is a shame for the civilized world; 

247 



IN PORTS AFAR 

"For mankind is one in spirit and an impulse bears 

along 
Round the earth's electric circle the swift blush of right 

and wrong." 

It IS idle to talk about Japan being sensitive, and 
to mention her "honor," and to assume that Cali- 
fornia raised the issue. The two questions are: 
What ought to be done to make sure that it will 
never occur again? and. What shall be done to 
secure the release of the poor six, who are without 
friends, protection, or liberty, and caught in the 
sinuosities of the Oriental mind, which insists that 
something must be done and some one found guilty 
in order to "save face?" It is the case of a Japa- 
nese Dreyfus, only in far-awuy Korea there are 
six of them given over to a Devil's Island, and 
with no Colonel Picquart, Zola, or Maitre Labori 
to agitate until justice be done them. The Japa- 
nese plainly meditate more serious reprisals against 
the United States than any educated American is 
willing at this stage of public opinion to credit. 
No one six months ago would have credited Huerta 
with a disposition to challenge American public 
opinion, and yet he has done it. Autocrats and 
dictators are slow to learn, and no lesson has yet 

248 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

been given to the Japanese official classes. They 
need American sympathy and straight- forward 
speech on the part of their American friends. In- 
stead of American papers of large influence saying 
that there has been no torture of Korean Christians, 
only a little "third-degree" police practice, and 
that the approval by the supreme court of the guilt 
of the six finally settles the matter, there should 
be the unequivocal demand for a rehearing. 

People who ought to know told us at Tokyo that 
torture is practiced regularly in Japan. Let some 
one tell these little chaps that they have a long 
way to equality yet. They will need to make such 
reparation as is in their power ; first, try and punish 
Kinutomo for the murder of two of his country- 
men, and second, give more than their mere word 
that they will not repeat the same treachery toward 
China. 

And so we went to Japan, rode about Nagasaki, 
admired the inland sea, landed at Kobe for a five- 
days' trip to Kyoto, Miyanoshita, Kamakura, where 
the great god Buddha sits and equably "hears the 
seas and centuries murmur in his ears," and Tokyo ; 
we saw the azalea dance, rode in jinrikishas often, 
admired the thrift and beauty of the farms, and 

249 



IN PORTS AFAR 

saw regiments mjarching in and out before the im- 
perial palace. Our "boy" told us in rather good 
English that Japan would land five hundred thou- 
sand men in California if we did not give them 
"their rights." We saw the tombs of the forty- 
seven Ronins, visited the palaces and temples of 
the Shoguns, and chaffered over dress goods. Dam- 
ascene work, and spent an afternoon watching 
the All-Filipino baseball team play the University 
of Japan team, Meiji. They are Malay, not Mon- 
gol; they are an island empire and, like England, 
contiguous to a great continent, over which they 
will undoubtedly exercise the greatest influence; 
just now they are talking about equality, while the 
official classes oppress the poor and lay grievous 
burdens upon their backs. It is a system of ex- 
ploitation such as is common in other parts of the 
world, and while it is Oriental, it is not democratic, 
and the day hastens when some Secretary of State 
and some great body of missionaries will need to 
speak the plain truth about this boy of civilization 
who has been given a rifle and automobile by his 
folks, and who is now the terror of the neighbor- 
hood. 

One word of comimendation for the plucky mis- 

250 



AMERICA AND JAPAN 

sionary of the Methodist Church South, who could 
not be silenced nor terrorized. His name is Cook. 
Across the barriers of States and sections let him 
have greeting. There goes a man! And this 
brings me to the word of Robert Louis Stevenson 
which we have been yearning to say: "The gods 
have forgiveness for all sins, but heaven itself can 
not save a man who will not fight." 



251 



Chapter XVI 

TRANS-PACIFIC 

TEAVING Manila by the Pacific Mail is an 
■*^-^ event equal to a college Commencement or the 
coming of the circus to town. The bands play, 
the flags float, and there is something festive in the 
air. It consumed all Saturday afternoon, when we 
were supposed to embark, and until Sunday noon. 
Vice-Governor-General Gilbert drove us down in 
an auto. He was invited to stay during the Wilson 
administration, but elected otherwise. With po- 
litical experience as Congressman and judge; gen- 
ial, substantial, and diplomatic; knowing every 
detail of the governing process and every intricacy 
of the native mind, — he would have been invaluable 
to the new administration. Mr. Tener, of the 
Young Men's Christian Association, also waved us 
off^. John R. Mott picked a thoroughbred when 
he "rounded himi up" at the State College at Ames. 
Our new friends festooned the cabin with flowers 
and supplied us with books and magazines, not to 

252 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

mention a formidable-looking Igorrote spear and 
a fierce bolo. The great ship swung round, and 
the band played "Home, Sweet Home." Just when 
we were off we did not care to know, and for hours 
we sat on deck watching Cavite, Corregidor, and 
waving at the camp and the bay, happy to be go- 
ing, yet yearning to stay. The land seems a part 
of the United States, and having been there, Ma- 
nila does not seem so far away. It grows corn like 
Iowa, has big lumber camps like Michigan and 
Washington, raises sugar like Louisiana. Besides, 
there we have "dominion over palm and pine." 

It was in 1571, when the brilliant star of Spain 
was fast hastening to its setting, and when the 
dominion of the sea was passing to Britain because 
of her insular position, instead of to the Dutch, 
who might well have hoped to possess it, that 
Legazpi sailed up this self-same bay and founded 
Manila. It was a significant date in Spanish his- 
tory. The position is strategic, the climate is 
tempered by proximity to the ocean, the mountain 
provinces, easily accessible, aff*ord relief during the 
heated term ; the soil has a fertility unrivaled, and, 
surrounded by forests, where grow the solidest and 
finest woods, Luzon and its city might expect to 

253 



IN PORTS AFAR 

dominate the coasts of Asia as England the conti- 
nent to which it is contiguous. For a few months 
during the Seven Years' War, Manila was in the 
hands of the English, but Lord Bute, not knowing 
its value, scarce its location, and trying to appease 
the war furies that had been dancing their mad 
revel, gave it back to Spain. It suffered the slow 
decay of all the Spanish provinces, and diseased, 
possessed, deluded, without initiative to achieve its 
sanitary and economic well-being, and without wish 
or energy to renounce Spain and become independ- 
ent, it was a pawn well advanced on the political 
chess-board, and sure to fall into the hands of the 
first piece with leisure and disposition to take it. 

Whether it is to be rehabilitated and reconsti- 
tuted, Manila made into the chief city in all the 
Orient, second perhaps only to Singapore, or 
whether it is to be allowed to relapse into Central 
American disorder, dirt, and poverty, be further 
exploited by its own leaders, and follow the revo- 
lutionary history of its kindred provinces, is for 
the United States to determine. The development 
of the Islands is so important, as a political and 
commercial opportunity it may determine the poli- 
cies to be pursued in half a dozen other coun- 

254 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

tries, and has proceeded up to this time without 
political entanglements and on a non-partisan basis, 
so that even those who helped the new adminis- 
tration into power can not but regret that the first 
appointments by the new Governor-General seem 
purely political, and that the first announced policy 
appears to be a concession to party malcontents, 
who first of all are determined to serve themselves. 
Those who opposed the Nicaragua treaty because 
it would retain the present government in power 
in that Central American State will favor the 
abandonment of the Philippines. To others that 
treaty seems to express the comity and fraternal 
relations which ought to obtain among all the West- 
ern Continent republics, and they would regard the 
withdrawal from the Islands as hesitating to pro- 
ceed with a plain moral duty laid upon the United 
States by the Providence of events. Every Ameri- 
can and European visitor we met seemed to main- 
tain the latter attitude. Bishop Brent aligned 
himself with this group when he said that the 
effort of America should be "not to rid herself of 
a difficulty, but to rise to an opportunity and 
to render a service." 

How perilous it is to give the natives control 

255 



IN PORTS AFAR 

of the Philippine Commission, is easily understood. 
American control becomes at once no longer a mat- 
ter of decision in Manila, but the result of legis- 
lative or executive order in Washington. This of 
itself can not be regarded lightly, but it is of small 
weight compared to the responsibility involved in 
giving a large increase of power to the "politicos" 
who already dominate. The vast majority of the 
Islanders can not read or write, and have no part 
in the government by voting. A limited group, 
rich, trained under the Spanish regime, aristo- 
cratic, and temperamentally hostile to democracy, 
now control the government. They are in no sense 
representative people. With great force Bishop 
Oldham called the attention of the Lake Mohonk 
Conference to the tribal ideas which still exist, and 
the submission of the common people to the tribal 
leader. This has been degraded by a transfer from 
the tribal leader, the cacique , to the ilustrado, the 
big landowner. The President's new appointees 
belong to the ilustrado class. Jaime C. de 
Veyra, one of the new commissioners, is a large 
land holder, and his election to the Assembly 
was largely by his dependents. Judge Mapa, 
who has been on the superior court bench, is an- 

256 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

other ilustrado. Giving such men larger power 
and reducing the representation of Americans 
trained to consult and submit to the popular will, 
is not an extension of democracy. To entrust men 
of such temiper and training with the enforcement 
of laws against peonage and slavery, when they 
have been practically accustomed to peonage, and 
to plan an educational policy that shall make the 
natives self-reliant, self-respecting, and econom- 
ically independent, or as Secretary of the Interior 
to administer such laws, is like committing the con- 
trol of the currency to the bankers, the tariff 
schedules to the manufacturers, and apportioning 
police control to the leaders of the underworld. 
The ofBcial reply of the Philippine Assembly to 
the address of the new governor-general expresses 
the arrogance of a group of men absorbing to 
themselves and for themselves emoluments, places, 
and privileges reserved by democracy for the com- 
mon good. 

The Pacific Mail furnishes a trans-Pacific sailing 
superior in every way. Only at Hong Kong, 
where they have fallen in with a time-honored cus- 
tom of allowing passengers to make their own trans- 
fer, were we inclined to criticise. Were it a trans- 
it 257 



IN PORTS AFAR 

fer from one steamship to another, it would be 
altogether different. We came from Manila to 
Hong Kong on the China, of the Pacific Mail, 
and there trans-shipped to the Siberia, of the Pa- 
cific Mail, and though the tenders of the Pacific 
Mail were making transfers from one steamship 
to the other, and though we were in the harbor 
only three hours, the trans-Pacific passengers were 
all compelled to use Cook's boat or to call a sampan 
to make the transfer. Such pettiness is unworthy 
of a great corporation; but that is very little to 
reproach the management with. We found our- 
selves T\dshing that the Chinese gambling game 
called fan-tan, that was carried on incessantly, 
could be prohibited. The American officers say 
that they could not ship a Chinese crew if it were 
forbidden to gamble. And it is apparent that so 
long as Americans by the hundreds risk their money 
on the game it would take an act of Congress to 
end it. The Siberia poked her nose about the bar 
of the Yangste in a dense fog for twenty hours, 
trying to get her bearings, but we had time at 
Shanghai to visit our publishing house, chat with 
Dr. Gamewell, and call at the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Af?sociation. The international work of the 

258 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

Young Men's Christian Association, with such con- 
spicuous Associations as are to be found in all the 
large cities of the Orient, with equipment and 
methods that remind the young men continually of 
their life at home, is, next to medical work, the 
notable success of modern missions. John R. Mott, 
who is the promoter extraordinary, was offered the 
post of minister to China by the new administra- 
tion, but out of loyalty to his work, to the hun- 
dreds of young men he has induced to enter the 
service, and the great business men he has interested 
in its financial conduct, was compelled to decline. 
He is Secretarj^ of State, general manager, bishop 
de facto, and vicar of such a Christian work as at 
present is directed by no other man in Protestant 
Christianity. 

Because the Siberia is of American registry, and 
therefore American soil, we happened upon one 
of the most interesting incidents of the circum- 
navigation trip. While we stood on the docks at 
Yokohama waiting for a lighter to transfer us to 
the ship we were accosted by one of the young 
Chinese students sent from China to the Imperial 
University at Tokyo. His family, it seems, are 
Cantonese, and his brother, some years his senior, 

259 



IN PORTS AFAR 

IS a resident of California, and had been back to 
Canton for a visit. The brothers had not met for 
twelve years. He was returning to America on 
the Siberia, to which, as it is de jure United States 
territory, the Chinese student was refused admis- 
sion. By reason of a case of suspected smallpox 
on the Siberia, and the Japanese quarantine regu- 
lations, the brother of American citizenship on 
board was shipbound and could not land. The 
Tokyo student had been actually mlaltreated by 
the Swedish quartermaster and some Japanese 
coolies because of his persistent attempts to get to 
the Siberia. When the lighter docked we gave the 
Chinese student our traveling bags, and on ap- 
proaching the boats he was warned back by the 
same burly Swede, saying, "Chinks not allowed." 
I waved my hand and roared back, "He is my boy ; 
let him on." There is an appalling influence pos- 
sessed by any American with even a slightly de- 
veloped "habit of command," and the coolies stood 
back while he boarded. We steamed down the har- 
bor, and as we approached the Siberia a long 
dialogue ensued — in Japanese, though we perfectly 
understood its import. At the ship's side we were 
again challenged, but we elbowed the "boy" ahead, 

260 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

and once more, at the head of the ship's ladder, the 
quartermaster informed us that "Chinks are pro- 
hibited." The samie assertiveness, however, carried 
us by him, and the ship's surgeon, another Cer- 
berus, who was equally definite, but more compre- 
hending, allowed him to pass. He stayed all day 
with his brother and gave us "the blessing of my 
ancestors for twenty generations" at parting. But 
the real joy of the incident is still to be related. 
Several days out from Yokohama a Chinese banker 
bound for Wall Street on a financial errand, for 
capitalizing a Chinese railroad concession, came and 
sat down by my steamer chair. He told me how 
the Chinese "boys" on board had informed him of 
the volunteer service to one of his countrymen, and 
thanked us for it. He was widely experienced as 
a traveler, spoke perfect English, and we talked 
for an hour or m\ore on matters American, Chinese, 
and personal. As he rose to leave he said in effect : 
"I am too old to change my religion; I shall die 
in the faith of my ancestors, but the thing that 
has made China a republic and will make the 
Chinese Republic Christian, is the way some of you 
Americans practice equality." 

Though the Pacific is such a broad expanse of 

261 



IN PORTS AFAR 

water, the track of vessels is much frequented, and 
several times we dropped deck golf or shuffle board 
to watch the passing of some craft Westward ho! 
Bird Island was in view for several hours, looming 
at first like some lone obelisk in the waste of waters, 
then rising grim and tide-beaten as some Monte 
Christo or St. Helena. There were returning mis- 
sionaries by the dozen on board, and the heart- 
to-heart talks we had with themi, the detailed ac- 
counts of particular missions, specific information 
of the Chinese Revolution, accounts of the Korean 
tortures, the Japaliese-Califomia controversy, and 
expectations of speedy return to mission fields after 
leave of absence, made the journey short and in- 
forming. The Sabbaths were observed by preach- 
ing services, and Decoration Day was celebrated 
by an address attended by most of the passengers. 
The halt at Honolulu gave ample time for calls at 
the museum, the university, the aquarium, a drive 
to the mountains, and a dip in the ocean surf. On 
the second morning we made a round of the 
churches and had a glimpse of the dethroned queen 
riding in an old State carriage. Surely the last 
of the Kamehamehas ought long to be remem- 
bered, if for nothing else than the composition of 

262 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

Aloha Oe. We secured a copy of it at the book- 
store. The ship's orchestra played it often, and it 
w!as always vociferously applauded. The parting 
from Honolulu, like the sailing from Manila, is 
almost a civic function. One would think all the 
town was there. Bishops, consuls, and colonels 
jostled each other in cheerful good-fellowship. 
The band played for an hour preceding the depart- 
ure "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Aloha Oe," 
and "Home, Sweet Home;" the pelting of friends 
on the dock with wreaths of flowers thrown from 
the ship, and the smiling of friends through tears 
who were long to be separated, makes an inde- 
scribable scene. The shadow of it was all forgot- 
ten, when some one at our elbow said, "That is 
where we got our good cigars." 

We had been at home ever since leaving Manila, 
and the run to San Francisco scarcely gave us more 
than time to pack up our belongings, exchange 
cards with friends, and tip the "boys." Out of 
Honolulu, the trade winds at first roughened the 
sea, so that great green waves beat upon the bows 
and showered the upper deck, making the prome- 
nade exciting; but two days carried us into blue 
water, and the engineer had to slow down the 

263 



IN PORTS AFAR 

powerful turbines so as not to reach San Francisco 
on Sunday. Bright and early on Monday morn- 
ing we passed through the Golden Gate, were 
quickly passed at quarantine, and, catching the 
exact moment of flood and ebb in the tide, were 
at the pier. 

"Serene, indifferent to fate, 
Thou sittest at the Western gate; 
Thou seest the white seas fold thei'r tents, 
O warder of two continents! 
Thou drawest all things, small and great, 
To thee beside the Western gate." 

Thus wrote Bret Harte of San Francisco. It has 
rivals now, and Seattle, with an air of decency, 
respect for law, and without the Chinese quarter 
which is absolutely disgraceful, will divide thie 
future greatness of the Pacific Coast, if it does not 
come to supremacy. Then began our almost in- 
terminable passing of the customs. We had "cer- 
tificates of origin," but our baggage was scattered 
all over the space assigned to the "S"-section of 
the inspection floor, and we escaped just in time 
to greet the bishop and a group of preachers at 
the Book Concern Building. With them was 
Arthur H. Briggs, once member of the California 

264 



TRANS-PACIFIC 

Conference; he and Mrs. Briggs carried us off to 
the Palace Hotel, where they were stopping, having 
motored up from San Jose, and the afternoon was 
filled with lunch and dinner and festive hours. 
Then the Western Pacific, last of the trans-conti- 
nental routes to be opened, and the only one we 
had not traveled, bore us down Feather River 
Canon, past Salt Lake, through the Royal Gorge, 
and home. 



265 



